Lilting Grace
Sep. 1st, 2008 10:01 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_summergenTitle: Lilting Grace
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
july_july_july
Recipient:tcs1121
Rating: PG-13, for language
Author's Notes: Set early in Season One, between “Bloody Mary” and “Skin”. There are mishaps, but no dumb!Winchesters. I worked with the prompts as best I could and I hope you like it!
Summary: The sun had set an hour ago, the temperature was dropping, the sky was dark with clouds, and somewhere in the woods there was a wendigo waiting to eat them alive—a wendigo smart enough to divide and conquer.
LILTING GRACE
“Dean!” He shouted into the cell phone. “Where the hell are you?”
“Oh, you know…around.”
“What?”
“About two clicks due east of the car.” Sam did some quick math. Two clicks east of the car was the middle of Leech Lake.
“You have no idea where you are, do you.”
“Not a clue.”
Sam spun around on his heel, scanning the snow-topped trees. The sun had set about an hour ago, the temperature was dropping, the sky was dark with clouds, and somewhere in the woods there was a wendigo waiting to eat them alive—a wendigo smart enough to divide and conquer. Sam exhaled slowly, watching his breath.
“You got any M&Ms handy?” Dean asked, a weak attempt at humor.
“Just…try to get your bearings.”
“Well, let’s see. I’ve got an assload of trees in front of me, an assload of trees behind me, an assload of trees to my right, but to my left? Oh, no, wait, I was wrong. Still an ASSLOAD OF TREES.”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sam turned again, widdershins this time, but still no joy. He took a deep breath. Sam hadn’t wanted to take this job, but Dean insisted. After what happened in Colorado, Sam never wanted to hunt wendigo again. Quite frankly, Sam was willing to stick his head in the sand, plug his ears, and sing the Marseilles when it came to wendigo.
But, no, Pastor Jim had asked them for their help. He was still laid up with a busted leg and wouldn’t say how he broke it except to mutter “lutefisk”, “Lutheran sisterhood,” and “cream gravy” under his breath. And Dean had insisted. Pastor Jim was a friend, Pastor Jim had taken Dad under his wing, Pastor Jim had been good to the family. So here they were, in Minnesota, split up and hunting another fucking wendigo.
“We gotta play this one smart, Dean,” Sam said.
“As opposed to…”
“You know, shooting Casper in the face, going back into the sewers alone, climbing onto a plane with nothing more than a busted Walkman. That sort of thing.”
“My EMF detector works like a fucking charm. Can’t argue with results, Sammy.”
And that was true. Not for the first time, Sam wondered what his older brother would have done with a college education. Architect? Civil engineer? NASA?
“Okay,” Dean said, taking a breath. Sam smiled a little bit, wishing he could see him. Dean was putting on his game face, his big-brother-is-in-charge-here face.
“Here’s what let’s do. You know where the Impala is?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Go, get in the car, and drive back to the motel.”
“What?” Sam asked, painfully aware that it sounded a little petulant. “What the hell are you going to do?”
“I’m going to climb one of these goddamn trees and wait until dawn when I can actually see for shit.”
“You have the car keys.”
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to hotwire her.”
“Dean,” Sam inhaled, as horrified as if his brother had just announced his intention to take up veganism and bikram yoga.
“Just do it!” Dean took a deep breath. “God. I hope she forgives me.”
“I’m not leaving you here!” Sam said. He threw an arm out in exasperation even though there was no one there to see it. Dean had done a lot of reckless things to cover Sam’s ass lately, but spending the night alone in the woods, lost, dark, cold, and being hunted by a cannibalistic paranormal creature? That was really pushing it.
“Do it, Sam.” Dean’s voice suddenly dropped to a strained whisper. “Get in the car and go to the motel. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The little hairs on Sam’s neck suddenly stood up of their own free will.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Go.”
Then Dean hung up on him. Slowly, Sam closed his own phone and cussed. What was he supposed to do, here? He was rusty, he knew that. A few months back on the job weren’t enough to erase an undergraduate education of willful ignorance. Shit.
What would Dad do? The thought was unexpected and unwelcome. Sam squelched it.
What would Dean do? Sam looked around him. A wendigo. An assload of trees. No light to speak of. And his brother in trouble. What would Dean do?
Whatever it takes.
<<<<<<>>>>>>
Dean was not even kidding when he told his brother to hotwire the car. Sam probably had no idea what it cost him, in both pride and affection, to suggest that he lean under the dash and…God…violate his girl like that. It made him sick to his stomach. Then again, that might just be the adrenaline.
He could hear it now. Just barely, but he could. Dean exhaled without a sound and focused on finding it with his ears. In and of itself, a wendigo made no noise. But as fast as it moved, it left a wake behind it, a little eddy of air and the occasional frozen twig or crust of snow was disturbed.
Dean closed his eyes. There it was. Behind him, a little to the left. It sounded bigger, though than the one in Colorado. It was like the difference between a Frisbee and a meatloaf. Instead of sleek and aerodynamic, this one was round, compact, and solid. Come to think of it, it didn’t sound like a wendigo at all.
Fuck.
At least he had the flare guns ready and waiting, plus a Smith & Wesson loaded with some of Caleb’s custom-poured silver shot. One-size-kills-most, Caleb called them. Dean called them his insurance policy. He had drawn the flare guns the second he hung up on Sam, back when he was hunting a wendigo, and he didn’t have time to reach for the Sigma 9 now.
The little hairs standing up on the back of his neck told him that this wasn’t going to end well and he really hoped Sam went back to the car. Now he just had to wait until it—whatever the shit this actually was—got close enough.
One shot, one kill.
The only warning he had was the scrape of an iced-over twig against the bark of a birch tree, and then it was on top of him. Dean was pinned to the ground with about half a ton of mystery meat on top of him, snow squeaking underneath him. It was pressing down against him like a medieval torture device and it felt like it was going to kill him like a junebug: crunch and then juice. Also? It smelled really, really foul. But there was one upside to having a monster sitting on you.
It made it a lot easier to kill.
The flare gun was harder to maneuver with the beast on top of him, but Dean got the job done. He always did. It was easier when the mark was stupid, like this one. There was just a little leeway with his left hand. He tilted the gun up, so the barrel was digging into the thing’s flesh. Dean didn’t want to fire, though, not unless it was going to get him something. It wasn’t a wendigo and if he didn’t make the right choice in the next few minutes, he was going to turn this whole job into an exercise in futility. Still, it was hard not to panic with the damn thing sitting on him, breathing noxious fumes right into his face.
The cloud cover broke for a second and Dean could see a big blue eye examining him, sliding up and down in it socket. The eye belonged to a face that was vaguely human, like one of those forensic artists had started with the right skull and then gone crazy with the play-dough. Dean filed his rising panic away under ‘things to deal with later’ right next to ‘Jessica Moore’, ‘Sam bleeding from the eyes’ and ‘Dad’s forwarding his calls to me’.
“Eyyytuh,” the creature breathed out on him and the eau de rotting teeth was so rancid that Dean almost hurled right then and there. “Eyyytuh.” It then performed some facial distortion that might have been a smile. “Eyyytuh.” Good Christ, it smelled bad. And if it, and not a wendigo, was killing locals, maybe it was eating them, too. No remains had ever been found. Okay, then. Kills people, eats people, looks vaguely human-ish in a Dr. Moreau kind of way…oh shit.
Dean knew what this was and the flare gun in his hand probably wouldn’t kill it but if he didn’t get it off of him and fast he was going to get eaten alive. He hated the Old World shit. Those evil buggers never screwed around. No monologuing, no empty threats, no room for error. Just death.
Dean smiled at the troll and then he squeezed the trigger.
It screamed and for a few heart-attack inducing moments, Dean was afraid it was going to expire right there and crush him to death. Dean Winchester, his tombstone would read, smushed to death in East Jesus, Minnesota by a troll with debilitating halitosis. But then it groaned and rolled off of him, taking the flare with it.
Dean could breathe again and the troll wasn’t going anywhere fast. It somersaulted a couple times on the ground, hissing and yelping with pain. Dean reached for the gun tucked into the back of his jeans and hoped that Caleb’s silver bullets would finish it off. His left hand was unsteady, probably the adrenaline, but it helped knock the snow loose from the semi-automatic. Dean’s aim was good and with a bigger bang than the flare gun, he caught the monster in the side.
The troll cried out again and Dean was sure it was dying. Dean could tell because he had killed a lot of evil shit and it died exactly the same way as the good guys: little noises of pain, sloppy blood, death rattle, silence. Wouldn’t be long now that it was writhing in its own blood on the forest floor.
“Onnnt. Onnnt. Eyyy…Eyyy…eyyytuh. Onnnt.” And after a few wet, putrid breaths that Dean could smell from where he was laying, the troll was silent.
And now it was Dean’s turn to bellow like a barghest. He’d forgotten about the flare, the one sandwiched between him and the troll. It got the monster off of him, but it had burned the shit out of his chest, too. He screamed until he ran out of air in his lungs and when he inhaled, he could smell the cotton in his t-shirt smoldering. Dean lost a little time there, white clouding his vision and skull filling with static.
When his brain settled a little, Dean did his level best to get a grip. ”One thing at a time, son. If it’s too much, just take one thing at a time. Keep your head. Get the job done. Get out alive.”
Dad talked a pretty good game. And most of the time he walked it, too. Except for that piece about keeping the unit together no matter what. Dad kind of screwed the pooch on that one. But most of the time, Dad was right. It was a damn shame he wasn’t taking Dean’s calls anymore.
One thing at a time, then. One thing at a time. There was something in Dean’s right hand. Yep. There it was. The other flare gun. But Sam would never see it. He was in the car, on the way to the motel right now. Yeah. And Jimmy Hoffa was having a beer with Elvis in Rio, just waiting for Weekly World News to stop by and snap a picture.
Dean lifted his right hand up in the air, at a perfect ninety degrees. He was shaking like a sheep in Arkansas, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He watched the flare take off and explode somewhere above him, magnesium shining with the same bright intensity that had burned his Henley and the t-shirt under into nothing.
The skin—and he hoped it was just the skin—over his torso his was firing at him from every nerve ending. At least, Dean knew, that was a good sign, that his nerves were still operating. But the cold was really starting to seep into him now, like contaminated groundwater. Sam was pretty damn predictable and Dean was almost positive he was coming back. But he couldn’t read Sammy like he used to and he might be wrong. But even if he did die of shock and exposure here in East Jesus, Minnesota, even if doing Jim a favor got him killed, even if he had to breathe his last next to the fetid corpse of a troll, even if Sam didn’t come looking…
He’d gotten the job done. He always did.
<<<<<<>>>>>>
Sam had heard the gunfire and it took every ounce of sheer stubbornness not to start running in any direction. He was pretty sure that Dean was behind him, but he wasn’t certain. And if he took off now, he might only end up further from Dean than he already was.
Then he heard Dean scream and Sam’s head really began to spin. Where was he? How bad was it? What if he hadn’t killed the wendigo? What if there was a bear? A wolf? Something else ready to make his brother a snack? The sheer number of things that could go wrong astounded him.
”One thing at a time, Sammy. Hang in there, keep your cool. Take one thing at a time. And don’t worry. I’m coming for you and so is Dad.” Dean’s, at least, was a voice of reason he could trust. At least when it came to hunting. And car maintenance.
Focus, Sam, focus. But the only thing he could remember about orienteering was the thing about moss growing on the north side of trees and he didn’t even know if that was old wives’ tale or the truth. What else? Don’t eat the mushrooms. Wait, no, that was from Stanford.
Just then, a piece of blinding light broke open the night sky. Thank God. Sam turned towards it and ran as fast as he could without risking a face-first collision with a tree. He couldn’t help anybody if he pulled a Sonny Bono here. Now that he was moving, things were easier and the fear ebbed a little.
Dean was a full mile away. It wasn’t far, not by the map, and not long on foot, but it still felt like an age. He smelled the troll before he saw it and the stink was enough to make his eyes water. Sweet Jesus, that was bad. And a troll? What the hell?
“Dean?” he called out. Nothing. And the dread hit Sam in the stomach like a Mack truck. Sudden, kinetic, and usually fatal. Scrambling past the troll, he almost tripped over his brother. Sam hit his knees at once, careful not to touch Dean before he could get his flashlight on. The beam of light spun around a little, bouncing off trees and the glossy underside of snowy branches before Sam steadied it on his brother. Sam pulled off his glove with his teeth and reached out to touch Dean’s cheek and then his neck. He was still, but not cold, and his pulse was good.
“Dean. Can you hear me, man? Dean?” Normally Sam would put a hand on his shoulder, give him a good shaking, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Dean more. It didn’t look any worse than 2nd degree, but the light was bad, and the burn was big. At least Sam didn’t see any other obvious injuries.
And thank God Dean was wearing cotton, because polyester would burn and keep burning until you cut it off and removed it along with a couple layers of skin. Always wear a couple shirts, Dean had taught him, and always cotton. Also, the ladies prefer a nice soft cotton to polyester—they dig the layers, too, leaves a little something to the imagination and how Dean learned these things, Sam would never know.
“Dean?” he said again, no response. “I scratched the paint getting into the car this morning.” His brother groaned, progress. “All the road salt here? Probably rusting already.”
Dean’s eyes opened to about half-mast.
“Jimmy fucking Hoffa, Sam,” he groaned. “Jimmy fucking Hoffa.” Well. That was cryptic.
“Are you with me here?”
“No, dumbass. I’m on a beach in Cabo taking in the view.” Dean’s eyes opened a little wider, already assessing, cataloguing, sharp.
Sam snorted. “Yeah, right. Cabo.” He double checked his brother for other injuries, making sure to check his skull thoroughly.
“You think I’ve never been to Cabo?” Dean somehow managed to look smug. Amazing.
“You’ve been to Cabo?”
“You can drive there, dude.” Sam cut himself off before he could ask his brother when the hell he’d been to Mexico. When do you think, jackass?
“Right,” Sam said. “Look, we’re gonna have to walk to the car.”
“Shit. How far?”
“About two clicks east of here.”
“Oh blow me. Come on and stand me up, here.”
And that was a near thing, too. Every muscle Dean moved pulled on the skin and by the time he was upright, he was gasping for air and unable to even curse. The worst part was, Sam couldn’t help him walk. Dean tried, once, to put an arm up and let Sam take some of this weight, but it stretched his torso worse than ever. Sam was pretty sure he almost passed out from that little experiment.
It was a long walk. Dean’s feet were unsteady and sometimes they didn’t quite clear a tree-root and Sam, walking behind him, had to catch him by the shoulders. It wasn’t clear who had the worse time of it: Dean, hissing in pain, or Sam, who was only making it worse. The whole thing was miserable. Dean couldn’t accept any help and Sam couldn’t offer any. Plus, Sam was worried about the temperature. It was cold (it was upstate Minnesota) and Dean was starting to look shocky.
His brother was running on empty by the time they got to the car. Dean was shaking, fine tremors that ran under his skin and left his teeth chattering a little. When the trees started to thin out, Sam was at least able to walk beside him. He kept his hand on Dean’s back, right between his shoulder blades or at the base of his neck. Anything for a point of contact.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Dean said the second he sighted the Impala. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean it. I’d never let him hurt you.” Sam rolled his eyes and leaned his brother up against the passenger side door. He reached in and cleared the backseat of various food wrappers and other debris and found a blanket in the trunk.
“This is gonna suck,” Dean said, eyeing the bench seat. He had to bend at the waist to get into the backseat and when that was over, Sam was ready to call an ambulance. But it was an overreaction, Sam knew, a civilian response. He was out of practice and he’d seen worse before so he covered by trying to make Dean comfortable. Sam pulled off his jacket and balled it up for a pillow, he covered Dean’s legs with the blanket, and he pulled off his toque and put it on Dean, to try and conserve a little heat.
It was going to have to do for now. Dean’s pulse was good and there was no sign of hypothermia, but he needed more than that. Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car before he realized that he’d forgotten. Folklore, Art History 101, Intro to Game Theory, Exorcism rites, it was always, always, always shameful when he forgot what he should have remembered. At Stanford, every drop of red ink on a paper, every missed bubbled on a Scantron was still an indictment. Ignorance was always appalling and never more so than on the job, when his family’s lives were at stake. And now he had to ask.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“No hospital, Sam,” Dean said.
“I don’t…I can’t fix this one.”
“It’s like riding a bike, Sammy.”
“No, Dean, it’s not. And,” Sam swallowed a big fat chunk of pride, “even Dad said to never mess around with burns.” There were just too many things that they couldn’t fix themselves: skin grafts, infection—the kind of motels they frequented were far, far from the clean rooms of the burn unit of any hospital.
“You quoting the man now?”
“Apparently.” Sam ground his teeth so hard he thought he might crack his jaw. “Just…where is it?” And then, to his surprise, his brother answered.
“Park Rapids. Can you get back to 34?” Sam nodded. “Just head south. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay.” That was too easy, Sam thought, usually he had to beg and plead to get Dean to a hospital. The thought made his blood pressure head north. He put the car in gear and began to creep back towards the road over a packed-in layer of snow. Dean cleared his throat from the backseat.
“So, what part of ‘Get in the car and go back to the motel’ did you not understand, exactly?” His voice was accusatory.
“Was that what you said?” Sam asked, as lightly as he could. “Reception must have cut out on you. It’s pretty spotty out here.”
“I had things under control. I would have been fine.” His chest had to hurt like a bitch, but his brother was back to playing bulletproof again. He was pale, sweating, and breathing like he’d just run a 4 minute mile, but he was still Superman in his own mind.
“Dude. You set yourself on fire.”
“But with flair. Get it? With flair?”
“You’re hilarious, Dean.” Sam reached for the radio and Miss Cleo in the backseat spoke up before he could even reach the volume knob.
“No punk emo bullshit.”
“Shotgun shuts his…”
“Zeppelin, Sammy. I need Zeppelin.”
And that scared Sam way, way more than the fact that Dean was willing to head to a hospital. Zeppelin was the ER of Dean’s music. Metallica was for soothing, Skynyrd was for empowering, Johnny Cash was for drinking, and Zeppelin was for emergencies. The last time Dean had asked for Zeppelin was before Stanford, in Ithaca, when he had been hypothermic, disoriented, and holding his shit together with a wing and a prayer. With his free hand, Sam fumbled for a tape, found one with “Zeppelin Mix” scrawled on the top, and soon “Kashmir” was filling the Impala with a familiar and enduring beat.
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream.
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been.
Dean was humming along in the back seat in a breathless kind of way. All of this had happened before, but Sam was usually in the back, Dad at the wheel. Sam knew from experience, from keeping his fingertips his brother’s wrist or neck that Dean’s pulse and respiration were slowing with every beat of the drum.
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land,
Trying to find, trying to find where I’ve been.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” Dean muttered. Sam barely heard him and he wasn’t sure if he’d been meant to, or not. But Sam was tired and he wasn’t in the mood for more Winchester evasions tonight.
“Dean. I’m your brother.” Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet, he thought, even if it never feels the same as before. “I’m never not coming back for you.”
Oh father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years,
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear…
Author:
july_july_julyRecipient:
tcs1121Rating: PG-13, for language
Author's Notes: Set early in Season One, between “Bloody Mary” and “Skin”. There are mishaps, but no dumb!Winchesters. I worked with the prompts as best I could and I hope you like it!
Summary: The sun had set an hour ago, the temperature was dropping, the sky was dark with clouds, and somewhere in the woods there was a wendigo waiting to eat them alive—a wendigo smart enough to divide and conquer.
LILTING GRACE
“Dean!” He shouted into the cell phone. “Where the hell are you?”
“Oh, you know…around.”
“What?”
“About two clicks due east of the car.” Sam did some quick math. Two clicks east of the car was the middle of Leech Lake.
“You have no idea where you are, do you.”
“Not a clue.”
Sam spun around on his heel, scanning the snow-topped trees. The sun had set about an hour ago, the temperature was dropping, the sky was dark with clouds, and somewhere in the woods there was a wendigo waiting to eat them alive—a wendigo smart enough to divide and conquer. Sam exhaled slowly, watching his breath.
“You got any M&Ms handy?” Dean asked, a weak attempt at humor.
“Just…try to get your bearings.”
“Well, let’s see. I’ve got an assload of trees in front of me, an assload of trees behind me, an assload of trees to my right, but to my left? Oh, no, wait, I was wrong. Still an ASSLOAD OF TREES.”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sam turned again, widdershins this time, but still no joy. He took a deep breath. Sam hadn’t wanted to take this job, but Dean insisted. After what happened in Colorado, Sam never wanted to hunt wendigo again. Quite frankly, Sam was willing to stick his head in the sand, plug his ears, and sing the Marseilles when it came to wendigo.
But, no, Pastor Jim had asked them for their help. He was still laid up with a busted leg and wouldn’t say how he broke it except to mutter “lutefisk”, “Lutheran sisterhood,” and “cream gravy” under his breath. And Dean had insisted. Pastor Jim was a friend, Pastor Jim had taken Dad under his wing, Pastor Jim had been good to the family. So here they were, in Minnesota, split up and hunting another fucking wendigo.
“We gotta play this one smart, Dean,” Sam said.
“As opposed to…”
“You know, shooting Casper in the face, going back into the sewers alone, climbing onto a plane with nothing more than a busted Walkman. That sort of thing.”
“My EMF detector works like a fucking charm. Can’t argue with results, Sammy.”
And that was true. Not for the first time, Sam wondered what his older brother would have done with a college education. Architect? Civil engineer? NASA?
“Okay,” Dean said, taking a breath. Sam smiled a little bit, wishing he could see him. Dean was putting on his game face, his big-brother-is-in-charge-here face.
“Here’s what let’s do. You know where the Impala is?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Go, get in the car, and drive back to the motel.”
“What?” Sam asked, painfully aware that it sounded a little petulant. “What the hell are you going to do?”
“I’m going to climb one of these goddamn trees and wait until dawn when I can actually see for shit.”
“You have the car keys.”
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to hotwire her.”
“Dean,” Sam inhaled, as horrified as if his brother had just announced his intention to take up veganism and bikram yoga.
“Just do it!” Dean took a deep breath. “God. I hope she forgives me.”
“I’m not leaving you here!” Sam said. He threw an arm out in exasperation even though there was no one there to see it. Dean had done a lot of reckless things to cover Sam’s ass lately, but spending the night alone in the woods, lost, dark, cold, and being hunted by a cannibalistic paranormal creature? That was really pushing it.
“Do it, Sam.” Dean’s voice suddenly dropped to a strained whisper. “Get in the car and go to the motel. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The little hairs on Sam’s neck suddenly stood up of their own free will.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Go.”
Then Dean hung up on him. Slowly, Sam closed his own phone and cussed. What was he supposed to do, here? He was rusty, he knew that. A few months back on the job weren’t enough to erase an undergraduate education of willful ignorance. Shit.
What would Dad do? The thought was unexpected and unwelcome. Sam squelched it.
What would Dean do? Sam looked around him. A wendigo. An assload of trees. No light to speak of. And his brother in trouble. What would Dean do?
Whatever it takes.
<<<<<<>>>>>>
Dean was not even kidding when he told his brother to hotwire the car. Sam probably had no idea what it cost him, in both pride and affection, to suggest that he lean under the dash and…God…violate his girl like that. It made him sick to his stomach. Then again, that might just be the adrenaline.
He could hear it now. Just barely, but he could. Dean exhaled without a sound and focused on finding it with his ears. In and of itself, a wendigo made no noise. But as fast as it moved, it left a wake behind it, a little eddy of air and the occasional frozen twig or crust of snow was disturbed.
Dean closed his eyes. There it was. Behind him, a little to the left. It sounded bigger, though than the one in Colorado. It was like the difference between a Frisbee and a meatloaf. Instead of sleek and aerodynamic, this one was round, compact, and solid. Come to think of it, it didn’t sound like a wendigo at all.
Fuck.
At least he had the flare guns ready and waiting, plus a Smith & Wesson loaded with some of Caleb’s custom-poured silver shot. One-size-kills-most, Caleb called them. Dean called them his insurance policy. He had drawn the flare guns the second he hung up on Sam, back when he was hunting a wendigo, and he didn’t have time to reach for the Sigma 9 now.
The little hairs standing up on the back of his neck told him that this wasn’t going to end well and he really hoped Sam went back to the car. Now he just had to wait until it—whatever the shit this actually was—got close enough.
One shot, one kill.
The only warning he had was the scrape of an iced-over twig against the bark of a birch tree, and then it was on top of him. Dean was pinned to the ground with about half a ton of mystery meat on top of him, snow squeaking underneath him. It was pressing down against him like a medieval torture device and it felt like it was going to kill him like a junebug: crunch and then juice. Also? It smelled really, really foul. But there was one upside to having a monster sitting on you.
It made it a lot easier to kill.
The flare gun was harder to maneuver with the beast on top of him, but Dean got the job done. He always did. It was easier when the mark was stupid, like this one. There was just a little leeway with his left hand. He tilted the gun up, so the barrel was digging into the thing’s flesh. Dean didn’t want to fire, though, not unless it was going to get him something. It wasn’t a wendigo and if he didn’t make the right choice in the next few minutes, he was going to turn this whole job into an exercise in futility. Still, it was hard not to panic with the damn thing sitting on him, breathing noxious fumes right into his face.
The cloud cover broke for a second and Dean could see a big blue eye examining him, sliding up and down in it socket. The eye belonged to a face that was vaguely human, like one of those forensic artists had started with the right skull and then gone crazy with the play-dough. Dean filed his rising panic away under ‘things to deal with later’ right next to ‘Jessica Moore’, ‘Sam bleeding from the eyes’ and ‘Dad’s forwarding his calls to me’.
“Eyyytuh,” the creature breathed out on him and the eau de rotting teeth was so rancid that Dean almost hurled right then and there. “Eyyytuh.” It then performed some facial distortion that might have been a smile. “Eyyytuh.” Good Christ, it smelled bad. And if it, and not a wendigo, was killing locals, maybe it was eating them, too. No remains had ever been found. Okay, then. Kills people, eats people, looks vaguely human-ish in a Dr. Moreau kind of way…oh shit.
Dean knew what this was and the flare gun in his hand probably wouldn’t kill it but if he didn’t get it off of him and fast he was going to get eaten alive. He hated the Old World shit. Those evil buggers never screwed around. No monologuing, no empty threats, no room for error. Just death.
Dean smiled at the troll and then he squeezed the trigger.
It screamed and for a few heart-attack inducing moments, Dean was afraid it was going to expire right there and crush him to death. Dean Winchester, his tombstone would read, smushed to death in East Jesus, Minnesota by a troll with debilitating halitosis. But then it groaned and rolled off of him, taking the flare with it.
Dean could breathe again and the troll wasn’t going anywhere fast. It somersaulted a couple times on the ground, hissing and yelping with pain. Dean reached for the gun tucked into the back of his jeans and hoped that Caleb’s silver bullets would finish it off. His left hand was unsteady, probably the adrenaline, but it helped knock the snow loose from the semi-automatic. Dean’s aim was good and with a bigger bang than the flare gun, he caught the monster in the side.
The troll cried out again and Dean was sure it was dying. Dean could tell because he had killed a lot of evil shit and it died exactly the same way as the good guys: little noises of pain, sloppy blood, death rattle, silence. Wouldn’t be long now that it was writhing in its own blood on the forest floor.
“Onnnt. Onnnt. Eyyy…Eyyy…eyyytuh. Onnnt.” And after a few wet, putrid breaths that Dean could smell from where he was laying, the troll was silent.
And now it was Dean’s turn to bellow like a barghest. He’d forgotten about the flare, the one sandwiched between him and the troll. It got the monster off of him, but it had burned the shit out of his chest, too. He screamed until he ran out of air in his lungs and when he inhaled, he could smell the cotton in his t-shirt smoldering. Dean lost a little time there, white clouding his vision and skull filling with static.
When his brain settled a little, Dean did his level best to get a grip. ”One thing at a time, son. If it’s too much, just take one thing at a time. Keep your head. Get the job done. Get out alive.”
Dad talked a pretty good game. And most of the time he walked it, too. Except for that piece about keeping the unit together no matter what. Dad kind of screwed the pooch on that one. But most of the time, Dad was right. It was a damn shame he wasn’t taking Dean’s calls anymore.
One thing at a time, then. One thing at a time. There was something in Dean’s right hand. Yep. There it was. The other flare gun. But Sam would never see it. He was in the car, on the way to the motel right now. Yeah. And Jimmy Hoffa was having a beer with Elvis in Rio, just waiting for Weekly World News to stop by and snap a picture.
Dean lifted his right hand up in the air, at a perfect ninety degrees. He was shaking like a sheep in Arkansas, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He watched the flare take off and explode somewhere above him, magnesium shining with the same bright intensity that had burned his Henley and the t-shirt under into nothing.
The skin—and he hoped it was just the skin—over his torso his was firing at him from every nerve ending. At least, Dean knew, that was a good sign, that his nerves were still operating. But the cold was really starting to seep into him now, like contaminated groundwater. Sam was pretty damn predictable and Dean was almost positive he was coming back. But he couldn’t read Sammy like he used to and he might be wrong. But even if he did die of shock and exposure here in East Jesus, Minnesota, even if doing Jim a favor got him killed, even if he had to breathe his last next to the fetid corpse of a troll, even if Sam didn’t come looking…
He’d gotten the job done. He always did.
<<<<<<>>>>>>
Sam had heard the gunfire and it took every ounce of sheer stubbornness not to start running in any direction. He was pretty sure that Dean was behind him, but he wasn’t certain. And if he took off now, he might only end up further from Dean than he already was.
Then he heard Dean scream and Sam’s head really began to spin. Where was he? How bad was it? What if he hadn’t killed the wendigo? What if there was a bear? A wolf? Something else ready to make his brother a snack? The sheer number of things that could go wrong astounded him.
”One thing at a time, Sammy. Hang in there, keep your cool. Take one thing at a time. And don’t worry. I’m coming for you and so is Dad.” Dean’s, at least, was a voice of reason he could trust. At least when it came to hunting. And car maintenance.
Focus, Sam, focus. But the only thing he could remember about orienteering was the thing about moss growing on the north side of trees and he didn’t even know if that was old wives’ tale or the truth. What else? Don’t eat the mushrooms. Wait, no, that was from Stanford.
Just then, a piece of blinding light broke open the night sky. Thank God. Sam turned towards it and ran as fast as he could without risking a face-first collision with a tree. He couldn’t help anybody if he pulled a Sonny Bono here. Now that he was moving, things were easier and the fear ebbed a little.
Dean was a full mile away. It wasn’t far, not by the map, and not long on foot, but it still felt like an age. He smelled the troll before he saw it and the stink was enough to make his eyes water. Sweet Jesus, that was bad. And a troll? What the hell?
“Dean?” he called out. Nothing. And the dread hit Sam in the stomach like a Mack truck. Sudden, kinetic, and usually fatal. Scrambling past the troll, he almost tripped over his brother. Sam hit his knees at once, careful not to touch Dean before he could get his flashlight on. The beam of light spun around a little, bouncing off trees and the glossy underside of snowy branches before Sam steadied it on his brother. Sam pulled off his glove with his teeth and reached out to touch Dean’s cheek and then his neck. He was still, but not cold, and his pulse was good.
“Dean. Can you hear me, man? Dean?” Normally Sam would put a hand on his shoulder, give him a good shaking, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Dean more. It didn’t look any worse than 2nd degree, but the light was bad, and the burn was big. At least Sam didn’t see any other obvious injuries.
And thank God Dean was wearing cotton, because polyester would burn and keep burning until you cut it off and removed it along with a couple layers of skin. Always wear a couple shirts, Dean had taught him, and always cotton. Also, the ladies prefer a nice soft cotton to polyester—they dig the layers, too, leaves a little something to the imagination and how Dean learned these things, Sam would never know.
“Dean?” he said again, no response. “I scratched the paint getting into the car this morning.” His brother groaned, progress. “All the road salt here? Probably rusting already.”
Dean’s eyes opened to about half-mast.
“Jimmy fucking Hoffa, Sam,” he groaned. “Jimmy fucking Hoffa.” Well. That was cryptic.
“Are you with me here?”
“No, dumbass. I’m on a beach in Cabo taking in the view.” Dean’s eyes opened a little wider, already assessing, cataloguing, sharp.
Sam snorted. “Yeah, right. Cabo.” He double checked his brother for other injuries, making sure to check his skull thoroughly.
“You think I’ve never been to Cabo?” Dean somehow managed to look smug. Amazing.
“You’ve been to Cabo?”
“You can drive there, dude.” Sam cut himself off before he could ask his brother when the hell he’d been to Mexico. When do you think, jackass?
“Right,” Sam said. “Look, we’re gonna have to walk to the car.”
“Shit. How far?”
“About two clicks east of here.”
“Oh blow me. Come on and stand me up, here.”
And that was a near thing, too. Every muscle Dean moved pulled on the skin and by the time he was upright, he was gasping for air and unable to even curse. The worst part was, Sam couldn’t help him walk. Dean tried, once, to put an arm up and let Sam take some of this weight, but it stretched his torso worse than ever. Sam was pretty sure he almost passed out from that little experiment.
It was a long walk. Dean’s feet were unsteady and sometimes they didn’t quite clear a tree-root and Sam, walking behind him, had to catch him by the shoulders. It wasn’t clear who had the worse time of it: Dean, hissing in pain, or Sam, who was only making it worse. The whole thing was miserable. Dean couldn’t accept any help and Sam couldn’t offer any. Plus, Sam was worried about the temperature. It was cold (it was upstate Minnesota) and Dean was starting to look shocky.
His brother was running on empty by the time they got to the car. Dean was shaking, fine tremors that ran under his skin and left his teeth chattering a little. When the trees started to thin out, Sam was at least able to walk beside him. He kept his hand on Dean’s back, right between his shoulder blades or at the base of his neck. Anything for a point of contact.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Dean said the second he sighted the Impala. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean it. I’d never let him hurt you.” Sam rolled his eyes and leaned his brother up against the passenger side door. He reached in and cleared the backseat of various food wrappers and other debris and found a blanket in the trunk.
“This is gonna suck,” Dean said, eyeing the bench seat. He had to bend at the waist to get into the backseat and when that was over, Sam was ready to call an ambulance. But it was an overreaction, Sam knew, a civilian response. He was out of practice and he’d seen worse before so he covered by trying to make Dean comfortable. Sam pulled off his jacket and balled it up for a pillow, he covered Dean’s legs with the blanket, and he pulled off his toque and put it on Dean, to try and conserve a little heat.
It was going to have to do for now. Dean’s pulse was good and there was no sign of hypothermia, but he needed more than that. Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car before he realized that he’d forgotten. Folklore, Art History 101, Intro to Game Theory, Exorcism rites, it was always, always, always shameful when he forgot what he should have remembered. At Stanford, every drop of red ink on a paper, every missed bubbled on a Scantron was still an indictment. Ignorance was always appalling and never more so than on the job, when his family’s lives were at stake. And now he had to ask.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“No hospital, Sam,” Dean said.
“I don’t…I can’t fix this one.”
“It’s like riding a bike, Sammy.”
“No, Dean, it’s not. And,” Sam swallowed a big fat chunk of pride, “even Dad said to never mess around with burns.” There were just too many things that they couldn’t fix themselves: skin grafts, infection—the kind of motels they frequented were far, far from the clean rooms of the burn unit of any hospital.
“You quoting the man now?”
“Apparently.” Sam ground his teeth so hard he thought he might crack his jaw. “Just…where is it?” And then, to his surprise, his brother answered.
“Park Rapids. Can you get back to 34?” Sam nodded. “Just head south. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay.” That was too easy, Sam thought, usually he had to beg and plead to get Dean to a hospital. The thought made his blood pressure head north. He put the car in gear and began to creep back towards the road over a packed-in layer of snow. Dean cleared his throat from the backseat.
“So, what part of ‘Get in the car and go back to the motel’ did you not understand, exactly?” His voice was accusatory.
“Was that what you said?” Sam asked, as lightly as he could. “Reception must have cut out on you. It’s pretty spotty out here.”
“I had things under control. I would have been fine.” His chest had to hurt like a bitch, but his brother was back to playing bulletproof again. He was pale, sweating, and breathing like he’d just run a 4 minute mile, but he was still Superman in his own mind.
“Dude. You set yourself on fire.”
“But with flair. Get it? With flair?”
“You’re hilarious, Dean.” Sam reached for the radio and Miss Cleo in the backseat spoke up before he could even reach the volume knob.
“No punk emo bullshit.”
“Shotgun shuts his…”
“Zeppelin, Sammy. I need Zeppelin.”
And that scared Sam way, way more than the fact that Dean was willing to head to a hospital. Zeppelin was the ER of Dean’s music. Metallica was for soothing, Skynyrd was for empowering, Johnny Cash was for drinking, and Zeppelin was for emergencies. The last time Dean had asked for Zeppelin was before Stanford, in Ithaca, when he had been hypothermic, disoriented, and holding his shit together with a wing and a prayer. With his free hand, Sam fumbled for a tape, found one with “Zeppelin Mix” scrawled on the top, and soon “Kashmir” was filling the Impala with a familiar and enduring beat.
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream.
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been.
Dean was humming along in the back seat in a breathless kind of way. All of this had happened before, but Sam was usually in the back, Dad at the wheel. Sam knew from experience, from keeping his fingertips his brother’s wrist or neck that Dean’s pulse and respiration were slowing with every beat of the drum.
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land,
Trying to find, trying to find where I’ve been.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” Dean muttered. Sam barely heard him and he wasn’t sure if he’d been meant to, or not. But Sam was tired and he wasn’t in the mood for more Winchester evasions tonight.
“Dean. I’m your brother.” Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet, he thought, even if it never feels the same as before. “I’m never not coming back for you.”
Oh father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years,
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear…
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