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nightspear) wrote2008-02-27 08:55 pm
Finding Home (2/?)
Title: Finding Home (Main Post and Chapter List)
Rating: PG-13/R for language, mostly
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of materialistic value from this.
Pairings: Mostly gen. Briefly, Sam/Jess
XXXXX
“You hate me that much? You think you can kill your own brother?”
(“Asylum”)
XXXXX
Psychology majors, Sam decided, were dangerous. The combination of their desire to be everyone’s shrink and a lack of knowledge, training, and experience was enough to give him a headache. That was on days when he didn’t wake up from some vague nightmare already nursing a headache, which, while not exactly unusual for him, was a little out of the ordinary.
Jess, who was pre-med, had decided she wanted to be a psych major. Steve wasn’t pre-med, but because Sam was as lucky as any
They looked at him oddly sometimes, too, in that God-I-think-he’s-going-crazy sort of way. Steve had once picked at the duct tape across their window sill until it ripped at the end and broke the salt line. Steve had looked amused until Sam had freaked out.
It was pretty stupid, yeah. Steve hadn’t thought it was stupid so much as a really weird form of paranoia. Then he’d said, “I guess this was something your dad used to make you do?”
Looking back on it, Sam was pretty sure he’d actually growled—there might have been words involved, but he was too busy sifting through his duffel bag for salt jar to notice.
A few months ago, he never would have let it show how much things like that meant to him—it wasn’t a gigantic leap from salt superstitions to runes drawn on the walls, and that could lead to the Winchester family business. But the longer Sam went without working on a case, or at least hearing Dad or Dean or Bobby or someone talk about a case, the more uneasy he felt.
It was harder than he’d thought, knowing the truth and hoping it wouldn’t find him. Every shadow looked more sinister than it should; every flickering lamp put him on edge.
He suspected Jess had probably heard about the salt line incident, too. He should feel lucky to be close to Jess and Steve, he supposed, but these days they’d really starting tiptoeing around him. He could see them holding back questions about his family—it was what every school psychologist he’d been forced to talk with had wanted to know about—but they were remarkably good at backing off, too. He tolerated their concern as long as they didn’t push too hard.
Once, while studying in a group with others, Mike mentioned something about salt used for purification from the Religions class. Sam saw Steve’s eyes flicked toward them, but he said nothing . Hopefully, he’d assume the salt lines were just superstition and nothing else.
Sam stabbed Dean in the chest one night.
It was a dream, of course, but that didn’t really make it better. He was almost glad for the headache he had when he woke.
Until his psych-major friends met up with him and noticed. He stomped hard on the irritation that tried to well up at the look they exchanged over his head, which they could do for once since they’d flanked him as he sat on a bench waiting for them. “What?” he snapped.
“You feeling okay?” Jess asked, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well these last few days. I’m worried, Sam.”
Okay, no question: they were definitely sharing information. Steve meant well, so Sam settled for glaring at him and tried not to feel like he was being betrayed, since it reminded him too much of--
(“You’re betraying this family, Sam.”)
--the fight with Dad, and drawing that parallel would put Sam in Dad’s place, and that was never, ever going to happen.
“S’just a headache, Jess,” he sighed, because she meant well, too, and because it was harder to glare at her earnest face than at Steve’s what’d-I-do look.
Last night’s dream had been unusually clear. Especially compared to the hazy impressions from the past few months, it had been really damn vivid. Even so, there had still been something missing when he’d woken up that morning, as if he’d been watching a scene play out but missed the most important part. Like everything would make sense if he’d known…well, whatever it was he’d missed. He couldn’t explain exactly why he’d felt so wrong when he’d woken up; why he’d had to run to the shower because he’d felt so unclean.
Although that might have had something to do with watching himself pick up a knife from the ground and stab Dean in the fucking chest.
Just a dream, he told himself, but it was yet another item in the his list of treasons against his family, and what kind of messed up psyche would imagine up something like that anyway? Which brought him back to the psych majors staring at him and his headache, which hadn’t left him alone since he’d woken up.
Maybe it was a penance-headache or something—he certainly felt guilty enough for it after watching Dean slump to the snow-carpeted ground.
In the dream, obviously. But still.
“Look, we should get going,” he said, standing. “It’s getting pretty cold, I wanna get inside.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to be studying on Saturday night,” Steve groaned but hitched his backpack higher.
Jess shook her head, wrapped an arm around Sam’s, and walked off toward the library. “I can’t believe you study, period,” she shot back at him. “Jesus, you’re right, Sam. It’s freezing. I thought it was supposed to be warmer in
“We usually get great weather here,” Steve responded, sounding almost defensive. “Doesn’t mean it can’t get a little chilly sometimes. Supposed to snow tonight,” he added.
Almost four hours later, the three of them were walking together back to their dorms, tired of studying but finally done with their group project due the following week. At nearly midnight in the unseasonably cold late November, even a college campus was nearly empty of people. Sam’s eyes were still trying to adjust to the darkness that seemed somehow darker than usual. Which was pretty stupid because it was just a new moon and because he’d spent his life before now preparing to hunt dark things in the dark. Now, however, he was more tired than a college freshman should be before a weekend midnight, and he wasn’t in the mood to think about irony.
“It’s kinda creepy out here,” Jess said suddenly.
Steve scoffed. “Yeah, Saturday night on a college campus, walking in a group of three. It’s not like anyone’ll mug us with giant Geek-boy shadowing us.” Sam rolled his eyes obligingly.
“Shut up, idiot. I just meant, what’s he doing out here alone at this hour? There, just off the church grounds.”
Sam felt a prickling sensation on his back. Following Jess’s gaze, he saw the man standing at the edge of campus, hands in the pockets of his black coat and staring back at Sam. And it only took a second for Sam to recognize him.
“Dad?”
Two heads whipped around to him, and he took an unconscious step back, then turned back the way they’d been going. “Let’s go,” he said tightly. Jesus Christ, there was no way he was going to do this now, here, in front of them.
“Wha—Sam, what the hell? That’s your--?”
But Jess’s question was cut off by the louder, more powerful growl: “Sam! Don’t you walk away from me again.”
The words doused him in a sudden, overwhelming jumble of confusion, incredulity, hurt…but to the top swam a rage so intense that even he knew probably wasn’t justified. He’d never been very rational when it came to arguments with Dad.
He took a shaky breath. “Steve, take Jess back to the dorm—”
“I don’t need anescort, Sam—”
“No, man, we’re not gonna—”
“This is none of your business!” Sam hissed, jumping when Jess’s hand found his arm again.
“We’ll stay back,” she said, her voice soft, as if she were soothing a spooked animal. Or a crazy psychiatric patient. Fuck. “It’s dark. I’d rather have my giant Geek-boy with me.”
Steve was looking unusually obstinate, so Sam took another step back and said, “Fine. Fine, but just…stay out of it, okay? Stay over by the church. This shouldn’t take long.” The anger rose again, as he turned back toward the dark figure, not waiting to see if his friends had listened.
The last few months had been so long it was hard to believe it had only been a few months since he’d seen John Winchester. Months of trying and failing to reach them until he’d stopped trying; months of masking panic with resentment when his own phone rang until they’d stopped trying, too. Months of hoping, wishing, praying, in those moments when he forgot to be angry.
And now…
“What are you doing here?” he said, tamping down the bubbling rage but knowing it would explode, just like it always did.
“Those your friends?” came the familiar voice, soft, but with the dangerous tone that usually meant Sam had screwed up. Sam had heard it a lot. Dad’s eyes flicked briefly toward Jess and Steve before turning back on Sam.
“You leave them out of this. Answer my question, Dad—”
“They easier to deal with than your own family, son? With their happy, normal lives?”
Sam glared back, feeling his voice start to rise. “Oh no. No no no, you don’t get to do this. You’re the one who told me if I was gonna leave I should stay gone! What do you want?”
“I want you to stop acting like a spoiled teenager—”
“How dare you!” Sam didn’t even try to stop himself as the shout ripped out of him. ”Showing up like that, after…I left all this behind, Dad! I just wanted my own life!”
John hadn’t even moved, but his stance was the same as Sam remembered it, the way he always stood. And his eyes were…. Sam felt his own rage waver at the sight of the emotion burning in his dad’s. He’d been mad as hell before, but only once before had Sam seen that look, the one that said he was so mad he wanted to beat the shit out of his disobedient son.
“Did you bother asking your brother what he wanted when you walked out on us? You bother to even tell him before you turned tail and ran?”
Sam sucked in a breath. John Winchester had no qualms about cheap shots, and he knew exactly where it would hurt the most. “Don’t…I was leaving you, Dad, leaving hunting. Not Dean.” Never Dean.
He took an involuntary step back, and his dad gave the disgusted, bitter snort that Sam had learned to dread. “Well. Won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
And the faltering bits of anger trying to stay afloat gave way to ice. “What do you…what are you talking about?”
“Dean’s dead.”
It took a minute to realize that his ass was getting cold because he was sitting on the ground, flurries of snow starting to fall around him, and that the hard outline under his hand was the backpack that had slipped off his shoulder. It took another to notice that John was still talking.
“…got reckless after you left, and you weren’t there watching his six—”
“Where were you?” He didn’t bother trying to get up. He wasn’t sure his legs still worked. “Where the fuck were you when my brother was—”
“You selfish brat!” Sam couldn’t help his flinch as his dad raised his voice for the first time that night. “He’s taken care of you your whole life, and you couldn’t spare the effort to—”
“Hey, don’t talk to him that way!” Sam discovered that his legs worked just fine as he rose and spun at his roommate’s voice, because Steve was stalking forward, Jess just behind him.
“Steve, man, stay out of this,” he started but his roommate wasn’t listening.
“I don’t care if you’re his dad, mister, but…”
When his dad finally moved, all he could think was holy shit because John Winchester was fast but nothing natural could move like that.
Steve was on the ground, holding his arm with blood staining the snow around him, and Sam found himself crouching in a fighting stance between his friends and his—the thing. Jess was swearing, and he wasn’t sure whether it was because Steve was bleeding, because Sam’s dad (not his dad, dammit, what the fuck was going on) had done it, or because Sam knife was in his hand.
“What are you?” Not-John turned to face Sam, and now his face was twisted into a malicious leer. Sam couldn’t see a weapon.
Inhuman strength, he thought. Possessed.
“Is that any way to talk to your father, Sammy? Your friend was getting in the way of our heart to heart.”
“Fuck you! You’re not my father, you lying bastard!”
Lies, lies, ran a litany through his head. It was a lie, Dean can’t be dead…
Shifting his grip, breathing hard and on the cusp between hyper-alert and dizzy with(panic) adrenaline, he allowed himself a quick look backward. “Steve? Jess? You all right?” Whimpers but no answer. Sam swallowed hard and forced his words to come out steady, soothing, but authoritative.
Just like old times.
“Steve. I need you to stay calm, alright, tell me where you’re bleeding. Can you do that, man?”
“How sweet,” the thing in front of him murmured, standing and sounding exactly like John. It didn’t look worried or even angry anymore, his eyes glinting in what seemed like amusement. Sam bit down a response and let out a shaky breath when Jess’s horrified words reached his ears.
“He…he’s winded, got a cut on his hand, but I don’t think it’s too bad. God, Sam, we’ve got to—”
Thinking fast, Sam bent and had a hand inside his backpack, by the time he heard the thing bark, “What are you doing?”
“I’m the one you want,” he reasoned, fingers scrabbling as surreptitiously as possible. He had nothing to bargain with since he wasn’t sure what the hell the thing was and was only guessing at what it wanted. “They’re nothing. Just let me…let me patch him up and get them away from here and you can do whatever the hell you—”
In a blur it was right in front of him, a supernaturally strong hand wrapped around his neck. “Don’t bullshit me, Sammy. I could gut you with your own blade before you could even blink. You think your own father doesn’t know your tricks—”
Choking for breath, Sam wrenched his hand out of the bag and threw the open water bottle toward his father’s face.
A hissing sound rose as John’s form reared back in surprise. “Jess! Steve! Get back to the church and stay the hell back!” Sam shouted, and he dove toward the half-empty bottle, flinging the rest at the thing—the demon, it had to be a demon—to keep it at bay. “Exorcizo te,” he chanted quickly, the words rolling with hated familiarity from his lips, “immundissime spiritus, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis…”
It laughed. Sam faltered, unnerved because it should be starting to feel it now, Jesus. “…et in nomine Iesu Christi Filii eius...”
“…Domini et Iudicis nostri,” the demon continued itself, making Sam’s mind go utterly blank with shock, “et in virtute Spiritus Sancti…” It trailed off, its mocking grin wider than ever as it bent over him, not an inch away from his face. “Shall I go on?”
In an instant Sam had his knife point resting at the thing’s throat. “What the fuck are you,” he said again, but it came out as a whisper. “Get out of my dad,” he tried again, succeeding in a slightly stronger tone. Or louder, anyway.
“Gonna slit my throat, Sammy?” it whispered back to him.
“Give me a reason,” Sam breathed back. “I mean it,” he warned ineffectually as it effortlessly pulled his arm away.
“You really gonna kill this meatsuit? You know you want to. You’ve wanted to ever since that night you left. Since before then.”
“You don’t know a thing about me.” It smirked as the knife trembled in Sam’s hand. Useless. Not even cold iron or silver.
It shrugged. “Maybe. But I know everything your dad knows, and he sure remembers how your face felt on his fist.”
“Shut up. It wasn’t like that,” even though yeah, it pretty much was.
A second later, there was a pain against Sam’s cheek and he was crashing into the ground, several feet back.
“Sorry,” his dad’s voice mocked. “Was it more like that? Should have paid more attention in training, Sammy.”
Except he had been paying attention, more than Dad had ever known. Before he could think, Sam was on his feet, ducking a second punch and retaliating with a kick that contacted but barely knocked the thing back. It smirked, eyes gleaming, and dove in again.
The moves were the same—he’d danced this dance with Dad more than with anyone else besides Dean—but it was all faster, harder, immovable. Even with his longer reach and Dad’s greater bulk, he could barely land a hit, and every time he thought he’d stepped back far enough it was as if the other could stretch another inch forward.
The knife was still in his hand, for all the good it didn’t do since he didn’t dare to slash at his father’s skin. The urge to drop it and concentrate on dodging warred with a reluctance to relinquish the only weapon he had that might be of any use at all.
“Christo,” he gasped in desperation, knowing it wouldn’t work. The other’s eyes moved up to meet his, and Sam staggered back, waiting for it to blink and open demon-black eyes.
But they weren’t black. They were—pale, glowing, the pupils slits like a cat’s. “Gesundheit,” the thing spat back, and when it raised a hand it wasn’t a hand anymore—the skin was split open, and under it was aclaw.
Demon or not, there was no way his dad’s hand could do that, unless it wasn’t his dad’s hand.
A shifter. Not a demon. Shapeshifter.
Decision made, Sam flipped the knife in his hand and threw it.
The shifter moved, but too slow from surprise. The blade missed its heart but still cut a gash through its chest deep enough to kill. To kill a human, anyway, but hopefully this would buy him some time.
Somewhere behind him, Steve yelled. Sam hoped he’d have the sense not to go for a second round but was busy stumbling toward his backpack, plunging his hand in and finding the flap covering his other knife. A cut from a steel knife wouldn’t keep a shapeshifter down for long.
For the first time in months, he wished he had a gun and silver bullets.
He’d just managed to grab onto the silver knife when he was bowled over again, this time slamming hard against a tree trunk with his own steel against his throat. A pile of ripped, hastily shed skin (ugh, that was justgross) lay on the ground, and the face scowling at him now was Dean’s.
“Honor thy father,” Dean’s voice said. “You were never real good at that part, were you, little brother?”
“Yeah, like you’re fooling anyone now,” Sam scoffed as well as he could with the wind knocked out of him and metal sharp on his skin.
“Oh, I know you know what I am,” the shapeshifter said, and Sam could only think God, if that’s not a demon possessing Dad, where is he? Where’s Dean? “You were always the smart one, Sammy. Got into Stanford and all. Guess I really wasn’t the brains of the family, or I’da known you were planning something. Kinda hard to figure out, though, seeing as you didn’t tell me you were going before you left.”
“You’re not Dean,” Sam choked out, but he couldn’t deny that it hurt hearing those words in Dean’s voice, with Dean’s inflection, coming from Dean’s furious face.
“You think I didn’t have dreams, too?” it went on. “I wanted it, too. College. A wife and kids. A home. But no way that was gonna happen. Had to look out for little Sammy, since he couldn’t look out for himself.”
“You’re making this all up.”
“Maybe not so smart after all. I know what Dean knew.” Sam’s expression must have betrayed his wary confusion, because its face split into a grin. “You don’t know shit about my kind, do you? And…Dean didn’t know, either.” Past tense, Sam registered, it used the past tense. “What else hasn’t Dad told you, huh? I mean…told us?”
“Not interested,” Sam managed, swinging his knife up, but before he could act he was pushed back and a sharp line of fire bit into his left arm.
Choking off a cry of pain, Sam clenched his jaw, reflexively clutching his arm above the elbow as Dean (no, the shapeshifter) waggled its blade playfully. Drops of Sam’s blood flew off and landed on the snow-blanketed ground. The silver blade was somewhere on the ground…covered in snow by now, probably. Fuck.
“See, that’s your problem, Sammy. You never want to listen. Never give a shit about anything but yourself. Dad saw it, didn’t he? You didn’t leave because you were pissed at him. You left because everything he said to you that night was true. Because you know he was right about Mom. She exploded over your cradle, Sammy. Whose fault does it look like, huh?”
“Don’t talk about her that way, goddammit,” Sam gritted out, defensive not of a woman he didn’t remember but rather of an ideal he’d heard about his whole life.
“Taking the Lord’s name in vain, little brother? But you’re not a religious man, are you, Sammy?” Sam didn’t answer, and genuine surprise flitted through the thing’s eyes. “You are. And I didn’t even have a clue. It’s a dirty little secret, huh?”
“Shut up.” He was starting to sound like a broken record but couldn’t stop himself.
“Oh, this is too good, Sammy. You know who else believed in God? You know why Dad doesn’t go to church anymore?” Dean’s face bent close to Sam’s. “Mom prayed every day. Used to tuck her little boys in at night and tell them the angels were watching over them.”
Its chuckle was ugly, dirty, tainting Dean’s voice. “Angels. She woulda been better off praying to demons. ‘Cause where were the angels when a demon sliced her open to get you?”
“She died in a fire, you freak,” he countered, relieved to be sure of something, finally.
But the shapeshifter threw its head back and laughed, like there was nothing funnier. “Oh, Sammy, you really don’t know anything, do you? Dad never told you exactly how she died? Why she died?”
(…a demon sliced her open to get to you)
“You’re bluffing,” Sam said. “You can’t possibly know. Even Dad doesn’t know it’s a demon.”
A snort. “I’ve got my connections,” it said. “You hunters. Hunting what you don’t understand. What makes you think we don’t hunt back?”
“Connections? So you’re some demon’s bitch,” Sam said. There was something about channeling Dean’s attitude that warmed him enough to stave off his mind’s numbness. Or maybe that was just his anger beginning to return.
A muscle twitched in Dean’s jaw before the smile came back, this time harder and less amused. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be bleeding out on the ground now. You don’t understand what you’re facing. He isn’t just any demon, but if you’re disappointed, Sammy, I can promise you there’re a lot of others watching over you.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted. Demons watching over me.”
The shapeshifter shrugged Dean’s shoulders. “Take what you can get, little brother. They’re more dependable than angels. You’d know that if you bothered to pay attention to your dreams.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, the
Dreams…
(…watching himself pick up a knife from the ground and stab Dean…Just a dream…)
Thinking frantically back to the image, he closed his eyes and threw himself to the side, where the knife had been in the dream. His hand closed on the silver blade, and he whirled around and threw.
His aim was off this time; he’d missed the heart by several inches, but the shock of silver was enough for Sam to stand and grab the shapeshifter and yank the knife out of his brother’s body.
“You gonna kill me, Sammy?” Dean’s voice whispered. “You hate me that much?”
A breath—not a sob—found its way out of Sam’s chest, and he whispered back, “Don’t call me Sammy.” He took a step back and plunged the silver into the shapeshifter’s heart.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the creature’s eyes flashed yellow before it fell.