Falling Slow, for Lennelle, 4/5

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PART FOUR


While Castiel went to collect Donnie, Dean stood over the demon tablet. He’d set it on the edge of the table, hands pressed flat on either side. Sam watched him for a minute. Eileen had left shortly after Castiel citing a prospective case she wanted to look into, and Sam didn’t think he could focus on any of their research right now, so he didn’t have much else to do.

He wondered if Dean had cried any, for Mom or Jack. He hadn’t seen it, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t picked up Mom’s picture while he was wallowing in his room and shed a tear or two. He was a little afraid he’d brush Dean’s shoulder and find out.

That didn’t stop him from moving closer to his brother (though “close” still left the table mostly between them), but it was the reason he shoved his hands deep into his front pockets. “Hey, man, you okay?”

“What?” Dean answered without looking up, without moving. Honestly, Sam wasn’t sure he’d fully registered the question.

He stepped closer until his thighs almost brushed the table. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Now, Dean’s head did come up, frown pinching the skin between his brows. “What?”

“You’ve been staring awfully hard at a hunk of rock you’re never going to be able to read, man. And there’s no pictures.”

Dean’s face remained blank a beat too long, then humor crinkled his eyes. “I don’t know, man, if you—” He tilted his head and squinted. “You can see some pretty interesting things.”

“Right.” Sam huffed. Then waited. Dean’s smile evened out and he went back to staring at the tablet. “Dean—” he started a second before Dean said:

“Do you think he wrote about what’s going on with you?”

“What?”

“Chuck—God. Do you think he wrote about this—this—” His hand waved back and forth, almost making the sign of the cross over Sam’s chest. “—thing between you? Maybe once Donnie’s done finding what we’re looking for, he could see if there’s a way to fix you.”

“I, uh—” He couldn’t look at Dean, and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Which got Dean’s undivided attention. “What?”

“I—don’t think there’s going to be anything in the tablets about my—situation with Chuck,” he said. “He only just created the gun that caused it. I don’t think he could’ve written about it millennia ago.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean agreed impatiently. “And?”

“And—” Sam needed a deep breath to get the words out. “I think the—thing—with the seeing things is actually more mundane.” Ok, to almost get the words out.

“What?”

“I think they’re visions.”

“Yeah, from the freakiness with Chuck.”

“No, from—” He cut off, but he saw the realization on Dean’s face. “From me.”

Dean didn’t say anything, his expression too complicated to be any one emotion, but he came around the table so he and Sam were on the same side, and leaned against the edge. Sam turned so he mirrored him.

“Eileen suggested that some of what I was seeing might just be visions from me. That, somehow, this connection to Go—to Chuck jumpstarted abilities I’d suppressed, the same way the demon blood did.”

“I thought we figured out the demon blood was the whole reason you had those abilities in the first place.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe it’s still the demon blood, but the connection jumpstarted that. Or maybe it’s completely different. All I know is that these—visions are different than right after you got me from college. No headaches, for one.” At least, not of the midget drilling through his brain variety. “And they’re not a front row seat to-to One-Hundred-One Ways to Die. You know?”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

Sam shrugged, arms swinging out to show how much they didn’t have to explain this with. “I mean, I don’t even know for sure that’s what they are. Maybe it’s still the—” He gestured at the wound on his shoulder rather than say “soul connection to God.” “Maybe now that I know about it, I’m tapping into his new ending.”

“Except you said he said he couldn’t see us. So how would he know what’s going to happen?”

Sam’s lips pressed together. He didn’t have an answer for that, either.

Dean grimaced. “Right. So, what do you want to do?

“Do?” Sam echoed.

“Well, Missouri’s son ignored it or whatever, said it goes away. You wanna do that?”

“I don’t think I can,” he admitted. “At least, not until we fix this thing with Chuck.”

Dean twisted to look at him, ducking forward so he could see Sam’s face, concerned. “That bad?”

“N-no,” Sam denied, almost wincing at the stutter, and Dean’s expression registered disbelief. “I mean, I don’t think I should, in case I see something we need to know, to help with Chuck. If these even are visions, like—prophetic visions. It still might just be Chuck messing with me.”

“Right,” Dean agreed, but he looked thoughtful. “Well, whatever you decide about ‘em, Sam. I’m with you.”

“Thanks.”

“What?” Dean demanded, pushing off the table to stand in front of him. “You didn’t think I’d go all British MOL on your ass, did you?”

“No.” Sam smiled.

“Damn straight.” He suddenly looked around the room with a frown. “Say, Cas should be back with Donnie soon. Is there anything we need to set up, you think? Anything we need to lock away in case he goes crazy again?”

There were a few things. They cleared out the weapons, for starters, got the extra books off the table. Castiel showed up with Donnie about the time they finished, no room for more than a few seconds of awkward (on Sam’s part) before Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder—no psychic backlash, thank something—and stepped up to help the angel coral their prophet.

Sam settled back to watch, and braced for another vision.

*

The lore claimed the most common age for psychics to manifest prophetic visions was during or immediately following puberty. Sam couldn’t say he was sorry he’d missed out on that. He’d had enough to hate about hunting and the life without adding further freakishness to the equation.

And that assumed Dad wouldn’t have tried to drown him or something if he’d found out. He didn’t think he would’ve, really, but—well, the only people he could think of with a more black-and-white view of the supernatural was the British Men of Letters. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement.

*

The fact Chuck could hijack Donnie—complicated things. And was alarming. It also simplified things. Because if they couldn’t get their information from the source, so to speak, they’d have to get it from the one being besides God who’d been there. Which meant Michael.

Which meant going back to hell.

Sam waited with Dean and Donnie while Castiel went to check the Bunker’s warding—since he was the only one among them who could see it—and tried not to let his thoughts wander down memory lane.

It should’ve been easy, right? Not like he’d spent all that much time there. The Cage had been a completely separate, isolated environment. A little like solitary confinement, ramped up to one hundred. The time he had spent in hell, he hadn’t spent being tortured. He hadn’t been stuck. He hadn’t been the recipient of any of the torments. He’d been a visitor.

None of that stopped the tension from creeping up his legs and locking up his spine. He didn’t think Donnie noticed—too busy alternating between freaking out and beinig creepily zen about this newest manifestation of the trials and tribulations of being a Prophet of the Lord—but he knew Dean had. Had caught the look Dean had given him when he’d crossed his arms over his chest because his hands had wanted to start shaking.

Castiel’s report that the warding was still intact didn’t make any of them feel better, except maybe Donnie, who hared out of the Bunker like a bloodhound on the scent. When he was gone, and Chuck no longer had an open conduit to their conversation, they brought Castiel up to speed on the plan.

“But, Cas, if you wanna stay here,” Dean finished in response to Castiel’s caution, voice hard, and Sam’s lips tightened against the need to protest; making Dean feel defensive was just going to make the situation worse, “why don’t you stay here?”

“That’s not—” Castiel stopped, his jaw and hands bunching in frustration, then he sighed. “I want to go.”

“Great.” Dean clapped his hands and rounded on Sam. “Sam—”

“No,” Sam answered, hating the way Dean’s face had softened when it landed on him. Because he knew what Dean was going to say, and he knew why, and as much as he appreciated the sentiment, it wasn’t necessary. “I’m going, Dean.”

“I never said you couldn’t.” He held his hands up, palms out. “I’m just giving you the option—”

“And I’m not taking it. I’ve been back to hell, Dean. It’s fine.”

“Right,” said in that tone that didn’t quite believe. “Good. Ok. We’re all going.”

“How are you planning to get there?” Castiel asked.

“Rowena had a spell, right?” Dean looked to Sam, but Castiel was the one who said:

“I’m familiar with it. But Rowena’s spell needs to be tended if we’re to use it to return.”

Dean nodded thoughtfully. Sam was already pulling out his phone when Dean started, “You think Eileen—?"

“I’ll ask her.”

Sam turned away for some semblance of privacy as he pulled up her contact info on his phone, pacing away from the others so they’d be able to converse, if they wanted, without interrupting his conversation. He pushed the button for video calling and waited while it connected.

And instead of his phone and the bland, concrete Bunker wall, he saw Eileen zip-tied to a chair, what looked like slot machines behind her. “What are you doing to me?” she asked, looking freaked out, sounding helpless, starring up and to the left at something Sam couldn’t see.

“Sam?”

Then it was gone. He blinked, and Eileen came into focus on his phone, right where she was supposed to be, hands free and eyes bright. “Hey, hi, hey, I was just—” He forced himself to stop talking, then exhaled hard. He ignored Dean muttering, “Smooth, Sammy,” behind him, and started over. “Eileen, hi.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine.” Now. Had the vision where he’d started killing people because Eileen died—had that been more than just another one of Chuck’s endings? What he’d just seen—

“Is this . . . you calling in to check on me?” Eileen finally prompted.

“What? No!” Sam answered quickly. “No. No, we actually needed to ask you a favor.”

Her eyebrows arched in question. “A favor?”

“Yeah. How soon could you get back to the Bunker? There’s a spell we need to do, and we could really use another person.”

Eileen studied him a moment, then looked past him to something out of screen. Her expression didn’t change, so he had no idea what she was thinking before she refocused. “Ok. I don’t think this is a case. I just need to wrap up a few things. I could be back there in, say, half an hour?”

Sam looked over his shoulder to check with Dean, got a thumbs up. “Great. Thanks! We’ll see you then.”

“See you then.” Sam hung up and returned to the others, braced for the ribbing the amusement on Dean’s face promised. Because actually stumbling over himself like a kid asking a girl on his first date wasn’t embarrassing enough.

But Dean kind of—shook it off. “Ok, then. Do we have everything we need to do this here?”

“I believe so,” Castiel said.

“I’ll find the spell in Rowena’s notes.”

Sam hadn’t put as much time and effort into sorting and cataloging Rowena’s collection of spells as he had the Bunker’s resources, since it hadn’t been that long since they’d lugged her stuff back to the Bunker and he’d been distracted. Part of that was because he’d been busy. But the other part was guilt. Because even if killing her had been Rowena’s idea, and even if she’d left her legacy to him, he’d still been the one to kill her. Using her spellbooks when he was the reason she couldn’t do it herself still felt wrong.

So it took longer than it probably should have for him to locate the correct text within the correct book. Long enough that he’d only had time to read it through twice before Castiel and Dean returned with the ingredients Castiel remembered. He had to send them back to get one Rowena had apparently added when perfecting the spell, and one the angel had forgotten. He set up the bowl they’d use and started preparing the ingredients he had while he waited.

He was the only one in the Library when Eileen arrived.

“Hi!” he greeted, walking to meet her.

“Hi. You’ve been busy.”

“A little bit. Thanks, again, for doing this.” She was right in front of him, then, so despite the fact that it wasn’t really something they did, and it hadn’t been that long since they’d parted, no near-death experiences between them, Sam went in for the hug.

He hadn’t been able to get that brief glimpse of her tied up out of his head. It had seemed like a vision, like the one he’d had of Castiel, so he thought maybe touching—only he didn’t get anything when he pressed his hands to her back, just like he hadn’t gotten anything from Dean when his brother clapped him on the shoulder. The only reason he could think of that didn’t include it not working, was that clothing served as a barrier. So without considering it too hard, Sam slid his hand up her back until his fingertips touched the back of her neck.

—She stood stiffly, fingers wrapped around a scalpel held straight out from her body. There were signs for the bathroom, an ATM, and the cashier nearby. She said, “Stop. Please,” her voice trembling, her eyes anguished. Behind her, Chuck waved his hand and her mouth moved, but no words came out.

“I couldn’t see you,” Chuck’s voice said, pitiless. “I needed eyes and ears on the inside. Well, eyes, anyway.”

Her zombie shuffle took her to Sam, his hands zip-tied to the arms of the chair. He shifted against his bonds, but they didn’t give. She plunged the blade into the bullet wound on his shoulder and—

Sam pulled back, relieved to feel Eileen’s arms slide from around his waist, and made sure his smile stayed bright as he looked into her eyes—tried to see if he could see Chuck looking back. Maybe that made him a little crazy, definitely paranoid. But he just saw Eileen. It was less comforting than he’d expected. His head throbbed low. He squeezed her arms where he held her before letting go. “We’re almost ready.”

Then Dean showed up, Castiel right on his heels, and “almost” became ready too quickly for Sam to figure out what to do about what he’d seen.

*

Hell felt the same—close, stifling, faint stench like burning dreams—even if it didn’t look the same. Under Crowley, the dank, stagnant dark had reminded him of a poorly kept Scottish castle, even if the décor had looked more like a bachelor’s parlor. This hell had definitely kept the feel of a castle, but it was dry, spacious, scaled large, with heat reminiscent of the deserts of the Middle East. It wasn’t what Sam had expected.

Neither were the highly competent, powerfully ruthless, all female welcoming committee that so soundly kicked their collective asses.

Sam definitely hadn’t expected the ruler of hell to be Rowena, and knew he wasn’t the only one. Though, in retrospect, maybe he should have. She’d always had a knack for placing herself to best advantage to capitalize on power grabs. And hell had certainly experienced a series of power vacuums since the apocalypse.

Neither revelation made it easier to be there and make small-talk with the friend he’d killed or sit between Dean and Castiel and their hurt, resentful silence. Especially since he kept thinking he saw vampire Dean out of the corner of his eye. It was almost a relief, then, when Rowena ended her speech with, “Samuel, be a dear,” and rattled the ice in her glass.

He shot up like a Jack-in-a-box. Sam didn’t know where to find the drinks, but he would’ve agreed to just about anything that would get him out of that room.

No one stopped him as he left, so he figured he was headed in the right direction. The hallway he emerged into wasn’t the same one they’d entered through. It was just as large—wide enough that he could stand in the center of the room and extend his arms and still have a minimum of two feet of clearance on either side from the tips of his fingers. It was stone and clean and stretched before him with no indication about where it went. The attendants, who’d been following Rowena when she stopped the guards from killing them, were also nowhere to be seen.

Getting lost in hell wasn’t high on his agenda, currently, but he couldn’t keep standing just outside the door. His feet didn’t make a sound on the hard stone as he started walking, though he was almost positive their steps had echoed sharply when they’d arrived.

It made him twitchy—twitchier. He kept pivoting to check if someone was following him, convinced someone had to be.

No one was, but the fact he hadn’t seen anyone else—which normally would have been the goal on a trip to hell—just made it feel like he’d turned into a ghost. If no one could see him or hear him in hell, was he really there?

He almost pulled on Dean when the pale face appeared out of the darkness of a recessed nook, expression solemn, eyes burning. The vampire gestured him over.

After a quick search to make sure he was still alone, Sam went. The stone seemed to close in around him.

Dean darted in close, fast, so suddenly that Sam jolted back into the wall before he realized that he’d moved. Dean’s breath caressed his neck, a susurration indistinguishable from the warm air. “You’re not safe here, Sam.”

“Rowena—”

“He watches.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. He? His chin had come up when Dean had pushed close, and he found he couldn’t look down to see his brother’s—this hallucination’s eyes without sliding his nose down Dean’s check. He hummed uncomfortably as he redirected his gaze to the far side of the room, hyper-aware of the closeness of Dean’s body practically plastered to his front. He shuffled awkwardly, trying to put more space between them without pressing anything to his brother that shouldn’t be pressed. “He, who?”

“You mustn’t hunt the vampires, Sam.”

“What vampires? Where?”

Dean didn’t answer. A series of clacks, like footsteps approaching, penetrated the quiet, moments before they stopped outside the alcove. “You, there!” a voice snapped.

Even half-expecting the guard, who wore red leather armor complete with helmet and spear, Sam still startled, surprised into a double-take despite the immediately threat when he jumped and didn’t ram full-body into Dean.

Not that someone who wasn’t actually not being there should have come as a surprise.

“Thought you could escape? It’s back on the rack for you. Thirty years ought to teach you a lesson.”

“Oh, I’m not—” His hand gestured meaninglessly toward where he thought the cells might be. The guard didn’t look impressed. His expression, behind the wings and nose guard on the helmet, darkened as the spear angled dangerously. “Rowena sent me—” He held up the glass, shook it like Rowena had because he wasn’t sure the man would listen to more words.

The guard’s gaze tracked to the expensive crystal and stilled as he appeared to recognize it, something like irritation compressing the thin mouth. A moment passed, tableau frozen, then the guard sighed, straightening out of attack mode. He settled the spear in a ready-carry at his side, and gestured Sam after him. “Fine. Follow me.”

Sam did.

The guard stayed with him while he refilled Rowena’s drink at the bar, then escorted him back to the throne room with poorly concealed (though maybe he hadn’t been trying to conceal it) impatience. He held the door to the throne room for Sam to walk through, then closed it firmly behind him.

He could hear his footsteps again as he crossed the room. Rowena smiled when she saw him, settling back in benevolence from whatever she’d said that had rattled Dean and Castiel. “Thank you, my dove,” she cooed sweetly.

Sam was altogether grateful when another demon chose that moment to announce Michael had flown the coop and they could leave.

“Well, I am sorry, dearies, that I wasn’t able to be more help,” Rowena told them as they prepared to leave. Castiel held the cup, a smaller representation of the bowl they’d touched originally, out between them. “But I’m serious, Sam. You have to let the guilt go.”

He tried to smile. “It’s not that easy.”

“It never is.” He stepped into the hug she offered, and let her tap his cheek. “You stay safe, now. And you,” she directed to Dean. “You remember what I said and obey me.”

“I’ll try.” He wrapped Rowena in his own hug.

“Don’t be strangers now,” she chided, and hugged Castiel. When she pulled away, she straightened, head up and imperious, and said, “Come along, now,” with none of the genial feeling that had characterized the goodbyes. The two demons that had stayed by the door followed her out without a word or hesitation.

Dean tipped his head in a shrug. “Well. You can’t say it doesn’t suit her.” He touched the cup. Sam followed suit quickly. He recited the words for the retrieval spell, hoping Eileen had kept up her end (though Rowena would probably help them get back, if she hadn’t, a possibility they hadn’t known they had when they came down), and white light swelled until it swallowed them whole and dumped them back in the Bunker.

*

Sam scrolled through the day’s headlines with only half his attention on what they were. He didn’t expect to find Michael this way, and he suspected Dean didn’t, either, but they needed to cover all their bases. Mostly, though, he was thinking about Eileen.

He couldn’t get what he’d seen out of his head. Or, more precisely, what he’d heard. I couldn’t see you. I needed eyes and ears on the inside. Did that mean he could use her the same way he used Donnie? Because there was no doubt Chuck had been talking about Eileen. Just like Sam knew there was nothing He could’ve done to convince her to spy on them, willingly. Which could’ve meant he’d coerced her, but the first time—the first vision—she’d said, “What are you doing to me?” She’d sounded too rattled to be pretending.

That fit with what he knew of Eileen. He was pretty sure if she’d been coerced into working against them, she’d have found a way to let him know. But—now what? Did he tell her? If Chuck could use her the way he’d used Donnie—even if Chuck just knew what she knew—and Sam told her what he’d seen, what he suspected, then Chuck would know they knew that he was using her to spy on them. Once He knew they knew, he’d have to assume he couldn’t trust her information anymore. Then what would he do?

But how was Sam supposed to keep something like that from her? She’d never been anything but honest with him. Withholding that information, even to protect them, even to protect her, didn’t feel right. But giving her information that would get her killed when he could’ve prevented it felt worse.

And then there was vampire Dean, and what he’d said in hell. Thinking about it still sent a warning prickle up his spine. But stay away from vampires wasn’t really specific. He had no idea when that Dean had been turned, or if he really was anything more than a figment of Sam’s imagination. What if he was just some sort of freak off-shoot from Chuck’s mind that got mistranslated into a living entity when it reached Sam’s mind? He could have Sam off chasing a red herring.

But if what vampire Dean was real, and the vampires he warned about were real—what then? Were they a more immediate threat than Chuck? How did he even look into it? None of his searches had turned up anything that said “vampire” to him, either.

He looked up when Dean sauntered into the War Room, grateful for the distraction, and automatically checked Dean’s skin tone for unnatural pallor, his eyes for hunger. Sam only saw tiredness, frustration.

“Well, Donnie’s got zip. What about you?” Dean tossed his cell phone on the table, then followed it, sliding into the chair across from Sam.

Sam scrolled a few more times to see if he’d missed anything while he was distracted, but gave it up quickly when the best he found was something about a saber-toothed anchovy. “Nothing that screams ‘archangel.’”

“Yeah.” Dean seemed to run out of steam after that, staring off into the middle distance while he thought something over. Sam chewed his lip, wondering how to bring up his latest vision-related concerns. Except Dean did it for him, sort of, saying, “Eileen did good, right? Getting us back from hell. She doing okay?”

God might be riding shotgun in her head. But he couldn’t say that. Didn’t she deserve to know before Dean? “Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

She’d offered to stick around after they got back and Castiel muttered about checking some contacts. Sam hadn’t been sure what contacts he still had on the angelic front, and hadn’t asked. He still thought the excuse had been more about getting away from Dean. Dean had said he’d go give Donnie the head’s up. And Eileen had said, “You need me to stick around?”

“Nah,” he’d said. “You go ahead and get out of here—stretch, relax, finish your hunt or whatever. This next part is probably going to take awhile and be mostly waiting. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

She’d left without argument, which part of Sam wanted to argue meant Chuck couldn’t be influencing her. But if he was, he’d have already known they didn’t have what they’d gone to hell for. And God would no doubt have an easier time finding his missing archangel than a couple of hunters.

“If she needs something from me,” he told Dean, “she’ll tell me. We have an agreement.”

He needed to tell Dean.

“You have an agreement?” Dean echoed, eyes bright the way they hadn’t been since Mom. “That’s adorable.”

“Shut up.”

“No, hey. I mean it. Look, man, I didn’t want to say anything, okay, ‘cause I was kind of in a—in a bad place, and—uh—yeah, I didn’t want to jinx it or whatever, but, you know, I tried the family thing, right?

Sam huffed. He’d tried the family thing, too, more often and more recently than Dean. “Yeah, me, too,” he reminded him, hoping maybe it’d head this conversation off at the pass without Sam have to shut him down. “And that’s not for us.”

“No, not really.” Dean scratched an eyebrow, but kept going. “I’m just saying if it was to work, Eileen, you know, she gets it. She gets us. She gets the life. She’s hot.”

Sam couldn’t even say he hadn’t thought about it, sometimes, in a strictly fantasy what-if kind of way. And it made him feel a little sick, now, with what he’d seen, with what he was pretty sure he’d have to do. “Dean. I mean, I’m not—”

“Look,” Dean interrupted, sitting forward earnestly, “all I’m saying is you—you could do worse, okay? And she could certainly do better. Like, so much better.” He stood to leave and Sam almost panicked; he needed to have this conversation now before he drove himself actually crazy, but the words were still stuck in his throat. Dean patted his shoulder. “I’m happy for you, Sammy.”

Say something! “You shouldn’t be,” he managed. Which wasn’t what he needed to say, but it did stop Dean from leaving.

Dean turned back to him with a frown. “What’re you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t be. Happy for me, I mean.”

Dean studied him closely, wary like he was looking for the other shoe, then slowly reclaimed his seat, settling in with his hands clasped and stretched across the table, weight on his elbows. “Are you talking about before—about the visions? Because we’re gonna get through that, man. It might have to wait until we deal with Chuck—”

“No,” Sam interrupted, but—honest. “I mean, sort of.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to think of the best way to explain this, but—there probably wasn’t a best way. He pushed his hands back through his hair, and stilled. “Ok. Before Cas and Eileen got back with food, I touched the back of Castiel’s chair and—felt this rush of power. Like his Grace, I guess, and saw him somewhere else with the Mark of Cain. Okay? And then, when I called Eileen, before I talked to her, I saw her tied up somewhere. She was asking what someone had done to her.

“And then, before we went to hell—I was worried, you know, so I played a hunch and touched her, skin on skin, and saw—I was tied up the same way she had been, and Chuck was there, and she had a knife—a scalpel—and she was coming at me with it. But not like she wanted to be, like something, or someone was making her.”

“And you think that someone was Chuck.”

He grimaced. “Would make sense, right? But that’s not the worst part, because he also said he’d needed eyes and ears on the inside to be able to see us. And if he could control her, and after what he did with Donnie—”

He saw the moment Dean got it, and didn’t feel any better that Dean had reached the same conclusion. “—then he could be using her to get the four-one-one on us.”

“Right.” He’d sort of been hoping Dean would dismiss the idea.

“Chuck doesn’t know that we know yet, right?

“Right.”

“Ok. That means we can use it.”

Sam sat back—not that he’d really expected a different response; Dean was a tactician. Tactically, that made sense. “Use it.”

“You said Chuck had you and Eileen tied up, right? So, at some point he gets the two of you alone. And Eileen had a scalpel, not a knife, so it’s probably not just to torture you. You have something he wants or needs—”

“Or something he needs to cut out of me.”

Dean didn’t look quite so blasé at that, but he still nodded. “See, now we know somewhere he’s definitely going to be. If we can find Michael, get the spell, all we need to do is—”

“Let me and Eileen get caught.”

“Bingo.” Dean got up again. This time Sam let him go. “See if you can get more intel on where it’ll go down, or when. I’ll get Cas up to speed. And don’t let Eileen cotton on, Sam. This is important.”

“How am I supposed to just get more intel, Dean?” Sam called at his retreating back. “I can’t control it.”

“Figure it out!”

Sam threw his hands up, let them thump against the table. “Figure it out, he says,” he muttered. He snapped the laptop closed with an irritated flick of his wrist. It didn’t help.

*

There was no way Sam was going to use Eileen to try to get more information about the kidnapping when he couldn’t let her know why or what was going on.

The problem was that Sam could only think of one psychic they knew with precognitive abilities who might be willing and able to help him and, for all that Jody had said Patience Moseley was hunting, he didn’t really want to bring her into this. It felt like painting a target on her back.

He just didn’t see where he had another choice.

He’d passed Eileen on her way to the showers, so he knew the way was clear when he reached his room, but that didn’t stop him from making a sweep at the door, just to be sure, or from opening the door just far enough that he could slip inside. He closed and locked the door slowly, then retreated to the far side of the room. Eileen wouldn’t be able to hear him no matter where he stood, but paranoid habit died hard.

It was only the feeling that they were running out of time that let him push the call button as soon as he’d scrolled to her name, instead of dithering over how likely this was to get her killed. He put the phone to his ear so he couldn’t second-guess the decision.

The phone rang once, twice, was just about to ring again when it was picked up. A burst of noise, the babble of dozens of distant voices, then, “Hi, Sam.”

“Hey, Patience. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Sure. I’ve been expecting you.”

Sam blinked, and the next moment a door closed on the other end of the line and the ambient noise dropped off. “You’ve been expecting me?”

“Mm. Well, sort of. Not for long. I saw—I’m not sure what I saw. Jody shooting you, then Dean killing Jody. You and Dean in the Impala, blood smeared around your mouths. Some squirrely white guy whispering in your ear. Sam, what’s going on?”

“I’ll explain in a bit. But first, I need to know—can you control when you have a vision?”

“Sometimes. I mean, it’s not really controlling it. The energy has to be there. Like, if you went fishing, there would have to be fish in the pond for you to catch one, no matter how good your bait was.”

“Makes sense. What determines if the energy is there?”

“I don’t know. I just know that sometimes there’s no future to see. I met someone online who thought that if there were too many futures in flux, too many decision points by too many people, each as likely as the other, that there wouldn’t be a future to see because there would be too many possibilities.”

“So you see the one most likely to happen.”

“That’s what she thought. I don’t have any reason to believe she’s wrong, but I don’t really know why I see a vision only for some things and not others.”

Sam started pacing. He wondered if Rowena would’ve had an idea. He knew there were spells to let witches see the future. They’d hunted one not that long ago. He’d be tempted to try the spell himself, as a shortcut, except he wasn’t going to kill anyone for their eyeballs. And there was a decent chance Chuck would be able to see that. “Okay. But you can choose to have a vision, right? You can see about a specific person at a specific time.”

“Again, sometimes. It’s. . . . It’s a little like playing roulette. You have a wheel, and the specific events you want to know about are the numbers. The people you want to know about are the colors. You can choose a specific number and spin the wheel, but odds are you’re not going to get anything.”

“But if you focus on a person, you’re more likely to get a hit.”

“It just might not be the thing you want to know. Look, it’s not a perfect analogy. Language wasn’t really designed to talk about abstracts.”

“No, that works. That makes sense,” he assured her. “But how do you do it? How do you—select your color and spin the wheel?”

Silence. It stretched far enough to make Sam feel like he was going to jump out of his skin. Before he could prompt her, however, Patience said, “I saw something else, you know. I saw the squirrely man give you a watch and tell you that was your future, if you went forward with your plan. Sam, what did he mean? What plan? Who was that?”

Sam took a deep breath. “I probably shouldn’t tell you, in case it draws His attention. But He’s someone with the power to make it true. He wants me and Dean to suffer, so you’re all in danger, but we have a plan to stop him. Okay? That’s why I need to know how to choose or focus or—or encourage, whatever, a vision. Okay, Patience?”

“Okay,” she said, and he hated that she sounded scared, tentative, that he was the reason she was. “But there’s something else you should know about what I saw, before we do that.”

“Okay.”

“When he handed you that watch,” she said slowly, “it felt like—like the world shifted. Like you needed to be the one holding the watch before it would work.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Guess that’s something you’ll have to figure out.

“Great.” He smiled when she laughed.

“Okay.” She drew a deep breath. He could hear the rush of air past the receiver. “So, there is no one size fits all approach to psychic visions. What works for me isn’t necessarily what’s going to work for you. And you may not be able to get it right away. But there are a couple things that have to happen, however you manage them, so I’m going to start there.

“So, first, if you’re going to use your ability consciously, you have to be able to feel it. And, no, I’m not talking about some mystical energy. I’m talking about a place inside you. It might help to visualize it. I know a girl who thinks of it like a battery. For some guy in Canada, it’s a switch. Doors are popular, too, because you also have to be open to the energy, you know? But, yeah, you have need to find the physical nexus of your power in you before you can do anything else.”

“What if there isn’t one?” He didn’t remember feeling anything different when he’d seen Castiel and Eileen.

“There is. Plenty of people believe even non-psychics have the ability to open to mystical energy. It’s hard to find in the beginning, usually, but—you’ve had visions?” she asked.

“Yeah. I, um, I think so.”

Silence. “Wow. Dad swears a psychic’s powers can’t manifest that late. You’re, what? Sixty?”

“Ha. No, I—” He scratched his ear, pretty sure he didn’t want to get into his dreams maybe being visions when he was a kid. “That’s not important right now.”

“Yeah. Anyway, you should be able to feel it when you’re having a vision. It lights up, then, with all the energy going through it. Just, it can be hard to focus on when you’re caught up in what you’re seeing. But it’s there, I promise. And, no one can help you find it. You have to do that yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Once you can activate it, you have to—narrow your focus. That’s where the holding an item of significance comes in, like you see on TV. Things that are important to a person soak up their energy. If you focus on that energy and activate your ability, your power should be drawn naturally along those lines to any future that’s available for that energy signature. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Sam breathed, because the idea did. Whether he’d be able to make use of it, he wasn’t sure. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“If you know the person well enough, you shouldn’t need a totem to be able to focus on them, but it would probably help while you’re learning.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “Thanks, Patience.”

“Yeah. Just, be careful, okay?”

“We will.”

“Good luck,” she said brightly, with the kind of bounce Sam vaguely remembered in the cheerleaders back in high school. “And, Sam? For what it’s worth, I’d want the choice.”

Sam blinked. “What choice?”

But the phone had already beeped, the line dead. If she’d heard, she’d chosen not to answer. Sam dropped the phone on the bed and pushed his hair back off his face with both hands.

He tried to think back to when he’d touched Castiel’s chair, but—honestly—his whole being had felt different, awash in Castiel’s Grace. Or the residue of it. And when he’d seen Eileen—he wasn’t sure. It had happened so fast, so unexpectedly, and he’d been more focused on what he saw, what he’d heard. What he’d felt.

He sat on the edge of the bed, head cradled in his hands, and braced his elbows on his knees. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and tried to remember that first moment, when he first realized he wasn’t seeing the Bunker wall, but somewhere else. What he really needed was another vision, but he didn’t have time to wait for one.

It had always hurt when the demon sent him visions, he remembered. The pain had felt like it focused behind his eyes, in the middle of his head, and pulsed out, like an ice pick being forced through his forehead from the inside.

He couldn’t reach out and touch the spot with his fingers, even if it felt like he could, but he could picture it in his mind. The other Chosen kids had talked about flipping switches to activate their powers, and Sam remembered enough from his training with Ruby to get why. Expelling a demon from a host had been hard, until it wasn’t—like flipping a switch.

But that wasn’t what he was trying to do, and he didn’t think he could embrace an idea that reminded him of how much they’d lost, because that time was inevitably tied to him dying, Dean’s deal, Dean in hell, and starting the apocalypse. But, maybe if he imagined that spot as a seeing stone, a crystal ball, a window, something mostly benign he could use to see—

He thought he felt it pulse under his attention, not dissimilar to a heartbeat, and he did his best to focus his attention (with a little trial and error because the effort skirted uncomfortably close to skills he’d developed with Ruby) on that spot, to cement it and the way it felt in his mind. Because he needed to be able to find it automatically. He needed to be able to focus on someone else, like Dean, maybe, and reach out with his—thoughts? Feelings? Will?—and touch it in order to see—

—Dean, grim determination, a softball-sized orb in his hand; Dean, tears on his face as he went to a knee, braced against a tree in a place that looked suspiciously like Purgatory; Dean, baring vampire fangs in a threatening grin, side-by-side with Sam in a run-down motel room as hunters burst through the door—

—anything. Sam drew a shaky breath, rocking back like the images had physically struck him. The beginnings of a headache throbbed faintly at the edges of his mind, familiar from the last few days. He didn’t remember Patience mentioning anything about headaches when she’d been first using her powers, but maybe that was another aspect everyone experienced differently. She felt tired, and his head ached, like an overused muscle might after a harder than normal workout.

Which, fine. He could handle a little pain, especially since that seemed to have worked. He just needed to see if he could do it again, and if he could see Eileen and Castiel without requiring their presence or needing a totem.

First, he got up and grabbed the painkillers, though, popped two dry before he resettled to try again. He had no idea if ibuprofen worked on psychic fatigue, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Then he shifted back against the headboard, pillow squeezed in at the small of his back, feet up on the bed, reached for that spot.

He couldn’t find it at first, had to stop and quiet his mind, slow his breaths, get—recentered, or whatever hippy thing the New Age people said. It practically glowed under his attention, which Sam figured had to do with Chuck. But that was something to think about and explore later. This time when he reached out, he tried to focus on Eileen and Castiel, as well as Dean.

It felt a little like trying to juggle the phone, his and Dean’s food order with two drinks, and open the stuck motel room door at the same time. For a minute, nothing happened, so he shuffled them around, tried to get a better grip. He reached out just as Eileen slipped and saw—

—Eileen at the Library table, a middle-aged, blonde woman on the laptop screen in front of her, talking earnestly—

—Cas on the floor in a room in the Bunker, sprawled with his head pulled up into Michael’s lap, Michael behind him, choking him—

—Dean and Cas in front of a glowing, orange slit in reality, surrounded by trees and gloomy twilight, Dean gesturing Cas one way, him the other, fear in the set of his mouth—

—Dean in a casino, standing near the slots, looking over to Cas—Dean beside Sam, cutting the bond on Sam’s right hand before—Eileen swinging the portable line post, the post connecting with Dean’s head, Dean going down hard—

Sam reached for Dean on reflex, losing his grasp on the vision. He gasped, relieved to see only the plain walls of his room, the wooden dressers and shelves, his face reflected back at him from the shiny, black surface of the TV instead of—instead of anything else, even as a part of him groped to bring the final vision back, to see what happened to Dean. His head throbbed fiercely enough he winced away from the overhead light. Either the ibuprofen didn’t help, or he’d overreached enough to overpower the analgesic effects.

Or he’d rupture an aneurysm in his brain trying to see the future and all of this would be for nothing.

He inhaled deep through his nose, exhaled through his mouth. That seemed to help, so he did it again, then again. Until he could move his head without wanting to throw up. “Okay,” he said aloud, resettling his feet. He had to pry his hands from the pillow to shove his hair back off his face. “Okay. New plan.”

Plowing blindly through whatever the future would show him about whatever person seemed most likely to end with that aneurysm. This time, he decided to focus on a question. When will Chuck make his move? He reached out—

—the Bunker, Eileen at the table, laptop open, the blonde woman, face close to the screen turning away to face something off-screen, then gone—

—Dean and Cas, in a room with Michael (Adam), the archangel handing Dean a folded piece of paper. “That’s the spell.”—

—Eileen knocking on a door, Sam opening it—

Sam’s breath shuddered out. He hands ached up to his forearms. He unwrapped them from the blankets, flexed them. His head didn’t feel like it would explode. Yet. Progress, of a sort. He shook out his hands, shifted to get blood flowing to his extremities, then resettled with a breath. What does Chuck want?

—Chuck sitting in a casino, picking at a guitar, distant look on his face, stopping. “Son of a bitch!”—

—Eileen standing before a seated, zip-tied Sam, twisting a scalpel in the soul wound. “It’s not working,” Sam grits out around the pain. “I’m going to die in this chair Chuck.”

—Chuck standing with his back to Sam, one arm bracing the other, hand at his mouth, Sam reeling. “I’m sorry, kid. You and your brother deserve better.” Chuck turning, facing him. “You have to know. You and your brother matter to me. Deeply.”

—Sam standing in the Bunker, watching Dean walk away from Sam wanting to hunt. “Chuck, I know what you’re doing. Chuck!”

Chuck appearing behind him. “Enjoying the show?”

Sam watching Sam follow Dean. “You’re just showing me this so I give up.”—

—Sam struggling against his bonds, asking, “Why?” Chuck turning to face him, arms crossed. “I couldn’t see you.”—

—“You know, I hate missing my favorite show.” Chuck pacing a circle around Sam. Chuck gesturing between them. “We’re connected by these wounds. Which, as long as we are, I can’t leave this world.” Chuck twisting a scalpel at eye level, reflecting the light. “Our wounds aren’t healing properly, because of you. It’s as if there’s something festering inside of you, something that won’t let go.” Chuck pulling Sam’s shirt open one-handed, scalpel still a threat in the other. “I can’t see it. I can’t—” Chuck snapping. “—snap it away.”—

—“That’s what’s stopping me.” Chuck smiling faintly. “You still think you can win.”—

Sam barely realized he was back in his room, looking at his things, before he leaned over the side of the bed and retched whatever he’d last eaten onto the floor. He lost the sound, the sight, the smell, the taste in the white flash of pain that accompanied it, the dark that swallowed him afterward, making a grab for the bed to stop a header after the convulsions passed and the pain eased.

He gasped, coughing to clear his airway, and spit compulsively when the taste lingered in his mouth. He didn’t dare move his head. Moving as little as possible, he rolled onto his back with a groan. He wished he had some water, but there was no way he was moving to get it.

Call him crazy, but he wasn’t a fan of the excruciating pain.

“Guess that’s what you get,” Dean’s voice teased from the corner opposite the door, “for pretending you didn’t have abilities as a kid.”

Sam lifted his head painfully, squinting to see past the glare of the overhead light. “You’re not real.”

Dean grinned, barest hint of pointed teeth poking past his lips, and disappeared. Sam dropped his head back to the bed—stupid, ow—and threw an arm over his eyes to block out the skull-piercing light.

So he knew the where—sort of—a casino. The closest one was—it probably wasn’t the closest one. Dean had dragged him to every casino in Kansas, and he hadn’t recognized it. The when had to be soon. Didn’t it? Chuck would know they were trying to contact Michael. He probably even knew why, what they had planned. He’d want to get to Sam before they were ready. He needed Sam because—his brow furrowed as he tried to sort the jumbled images, the words—because Sam was keeping him from leaving, because they were connected, because the wounds weren’t healing properly.

Because—“You still think you can win.”—he had hope.

Could it really be that simple?

*


On to PART FIVE...