Lady Drury's Closet - Part 3
May. 11th, 2016 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsBack to Part 2
0x0x0x0
The first sensation to hit Dean was pain. Which figured – story of his life after all. The second was a raging thirst so bad he felt he’d been desiccated, staked out in a desert for a few days and left to dry like a piece of meat. Third was his default setting – a wave of near panic. Where was Sam?
His eyes were open but his vision was blurred, he couldn’t get a fix on anything much more than a few shapes and colours moving around in front of his face. Which brought him to another unpleasant realisation. He couldn’t move, not even a muscle, not so much as a twitch. He thought there might be voices talking, but the sounds were muffled so he couldn’t make out any understandable words. So, yeah. He was awake, but completely helpless, and this fucking sucked.
Some time passed, Dean had no way of measuring it, other than the level of pain in his left leg and left arm seemed to be increasing, until it became his universe. It was so overwhelming, he could think of nothing else. It wasn’t until some time later Dean noticed he wasn’t breathing. Well, fuck. Was this the Empty? Was he dead?
More time slipped away, how much, how long? Pain and questions were all he was left with. The light was constant, no sunrise or sunset, no night or day. The external voices came and went but never grew more comprehensible – he had no idea if they were male or female, or even if they were human. His constant companions were hunger, thirst and pain, closely followed by loneliness and boredom. One thing to be said about Hell, he’d rarely been alone, and the inventiveness of the tortures Alastair had devised for him could be called a lot of things, but tedious wasn’t one of them. Who’d have thought anything could make him nostalgic for Hell?
Once he’d become aware again, there was no way back to an unconscious state and nowhere to hide. However bad the pain got, he remained awake and aware and if he’d been able to scream, he thought his throat would have been raw. Maybe he should be thankful he had no measure for time, no scope for the endless now. He wasn’t. Grateful that is. What he was? Fucking pissed, that’s what. He clung to the anger – it was his only shield against the weeping that threatened to well up and he knew once he started on that route he’d drown in his non-existent tears. Thankfully he wasn’t that big of a girl.
At some point he was distracted from the pain and tedium by something new. There was a kind of tugging. Something niggling at his edges, irritating as an itch you can’t scratch. It took a while for a swirl of colour to register over the whitewash of agony from his leg and arm, but once he noticed it, it seemed to gain strength from his attention. Something was happening something was…
Sensation flooded him. The smell of paint overlaid with something more familiar, metallic and terrifying – blood, his brain told him it was blood – and bitter herbs burning. All scents that spoke of danger on so many levels – not least of which was the belated realisation that to be able to smell meant he must be breathing again. Over and above the still incomprehensible murmuring of voices was the thudding, loud in his ears, of a heartbeat – his heartbeat. Another resurrection? Maybe, though it didn’t bear much resemblance to waking up in his coffin after Cas pulled him out of Hell; neither did it remind him of Crowley making him into a demon. This was both a more gradual and more pain-filled experience.
His vision cleared, colours and shapes sharpening into focus and showing him the most important thing in his universe – the sharp, anxious features of Sam’s face. Pain was a constant, grounding him even though every exposed inch of his skin was being flayed – exaggeration? Probably…he hoped.
There was a swooping moment of disorientation where he seemed to be in two – no, three – places at once, then he was snagged on a thread, a tangle of them, that trapped him and stopped him from going…somewhere. He didn’t know where but he assumed it wouldn’t have been anywhere good, if the relieved expression on Sam’s face was anything to go by.
He was in the middle of the bunker library, without the faintest idea how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was being in that weird room in some woman’s house, standing in front of the same painted panel that was now propped up against a chair right in front of him.
Any further speculation was curtailed when his left leg protested vehemently at having weight on it, and he lurched to one side, listing like a drunken sailor in a storm. Sam caught him before he toppled overboard – and that was enough of that analogy, thanks very much. Dean didn’t even like boats.
“F-fuck, Sammy,” Dean’s words stuttered, his mouth so stiff, it was almost as if he was made of wood. “Think m’leg’s broken.” Sam was practically carrying him, and that wasn’t how things should go. Dean wasn’t that much of a girl that he’d allow his little brother do all the work, injured or not. So he did his best to stay upright, to share some of the burden, but the creeping blackness at the edges of his vision told him to forget anything so ambitious right now. The last thing he heard before passing out was Sam whispering apologies into his ear. Fuckin’ kid was always blaming himself for something.
And on that thought, Dean slid under without so much as a ripple.
0x0x0x0
When Dean surfaced again, it was to a more familiar feeling – a lazy swimming in the balmy Gulf Stream that signified morphine. The air was too warm, unmistakeably clinical, with overtones of fresh sweaty Sam, and Dean wanted to sink back down again, enjoy wallowing in drug-induced contentment. Of course, he didn’t. He was constitutionally incapable of wallowing when he knew Sam would be worrying – and besides, the sharp needle of curiosity was pricking him. With an effort, he opened his eyes.
Sure enough, a cocoon of pasty hospital green greeted him, along with with the altogether more reassuring sight of his gigantic brother folded uncomfortably into one of those uncomfortable plastic-covered chairs that only seem to appear at hospital bedsides. Dean was rather miffed to find that the rhythmic rumbling interrupted by random snuffling he’d thought to be a malfunctioning air-con unit was in fact Sam, who was demonstrating his lack of worry about Dean by sleeping through Dean’s awakening. Typical.
Which left Dean none the wiser as to how he’d ended up in hospital for the umpteenth time in his career. He tried to backtrack but got no further than a jumbled up mess of memories about the bunker, some dumbass ancient paintings and a thin blonde chick before he came up against a fetid dark pool of introspection that had him backpedalling faster than you could say Christo to a demon. All the pleasant warmth the morphine had induced was dispelled, and Dean couldn’t help shuddering. He’d recognised it as a place he didn’t want to go back to, and he had a horrible feeling he’d already spent more time there than he cared to remember.
Now wide awake, and feeling as if someone had upended a bucket of icy water over his head, Dean looked around for distractions and discovered a) it wasn’t just his leg that was broken but his left arm as well, and b) Sam hadn’t come unscathed through whatever it was that had happened to them. Dean’s attention honed in on the latter, a well worn route that he was comfortable following. Now his vision was clear, Dean could see how worn and tired Sam looked, his glasses askew on his pointy nose. Dean’s heart lurched when he took in the way Sam was cradling his left hand to his chest, focussing on Sam’s bandaged pinky finger, then running his gaze over the rest of Sam’s body, looking for other signs of damage. He relaxed a little when he came up with nothing else, only Winchester wear and tear, and the creeping cracks and lines of aging – which were bad enough. Dean hated to see his little brother growing old, just as he’d hated to see little Sammy’s innocence wiped away by monsters all those years ago. Fuck inevitability; Dean still wished he could fight it.
After trying and failing to sit up, Dean decided that fighting of any kind was probably going to have to wait a few hours, maybe a few days. The effort left him dizzy and sweating, and the quiet whimper he gave out woke Sam, which was embarrassing.
“Hey,” Sam said, leaning forward and putting one large hand on Dean’s good arm. Fuck if it didn’t feel like a ton weight and what the hell was wrong with him? Surely this weakness was more than the good drugs and a couple of broken bones.
“W’h’p’n?” was the best Dean could manage, but after forty-odd years, luckily Sam was fluent in Dean-speak. Typical Sam, he replied to Dean’s question with one of his own.
“What do you remember?”
Good question. What did Dean remember? Or rather, what did he remember that he was willing to share? He took advantage of the few moments sipping at the water Sam gave him to gather his thoughts. It was lukewarm and tasted like plastic but it was glorious.
“Dean?”
Dean jolted out of the blissful rehydrating haze he’d fallen into, then winced when the movement jarred his broken bones. Strangest fucking injuries he’d ever had, and that was saying something.
“Sorry, m’ so thirsty, Sammy,” he croaked, realising it was true. He was as parched as Nevada, and hungry too. He looked at his hand where he was still clutching the now empty cup, and did a double take. He put the cup down carefully, holding his hand up in front of his face. Apart from feeling like his limb weighed a ton, he was part horrified, part fascinated to see how all the tendons stood out over the bones, the muscle and flesh wasted away. Great. He’d come back from wherever he’d been looking like a freaking skeleton. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his head was filled to bursting with every single crappy decision he’d ever made, every wrong action he’d ever taken and every bad word he’d ever spoken. He didn’t notice his hand had started shaking until Sam’s giant mitt wrapped round his fingers and gently lowered his hand onto his stomach.
“Dean,” Sam repeated, but this time there was no interrogation in his tone, only concern, and it was all too much. A trembling spread like contagion through his whole body, and before he knew what was happening, tears were streaming down his face and he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run away, he wanted to sink through the bed and disappear, he wanted…
Then Sam was climbing onto the damn bed, all tangled up with Dean’s IVs and just smothered him. Those ridiculously long arms wrapped around Dean until all the wanting was squeezed out of him and the shaking finally stopped. For a long time, Sam didn’t let go, and Dean didn’t move, and they sat listening to each other’s breathing, as if they both understood that words were unnecessary encumbrances after all these years. Too easily misunderstood, too revealing, too concealing, too inadequate.
0x0x0x0
Pearl and Jody were in the bunker, waiting, when Sam brought Dean home – as usual discharged AMA. Using crutches was hard with one arm in plaster as well as the leg, so Dean had to lean on Sam in order to negotiate the bunker stairs – in fact, Sam was practically carrying him, though Dean would never admit it. Dean didn’t want to think about what the look of shock on Jody’s face meant about the state of his body; he’d managed to avoid mirrors since he’d woken up. Apparently Sam had shaved a substantial beard off for him while he’d been playing Mr Comatose in the hospital. Turned out he’d only been there long enough to get his leg and arm set and a bunch of IV nutrients shoved into his veins to counteract what appeared to be several weeks’ worth of starvation. As Sam had pointed out, he was lucky that the whole time he’d spent as a wall painting hadn’t counted or he’d have been a desiccated corpse by now. Which was why Dean had insisted on getting back to the bunker as quick as possible, because he was only too aware Claire had been trapped for several months longer than him and Joel.
Once Dean was settled with his leg propped up on a chair, white faced and breathing heavily, and longing for his morphine drip, Pearl presented her idea of using a tooth for the bone part of the recipe, as a less drastic alternative to Sam’s self-mutilation. That was when Dean found out that Sam had chopped off the first joint of his left pinky finger to provide both the blood and bone part of the spell. Dean ranted for several minutes over this, and Sam allowed him to let off steam, but they both knew each of them would cut off entire limbs to save each other. From the expressions on their faces, everyone there knew Dean’s bluster came from very weak ground, but indulged him anyway. Dean didn’t let on, but he appreciated the courtesy.
Especially when he discovered that the two girls had been waiting on him and Sam before trying the ritual again to free Claire and little Joel. Which, after finding out that this whole deal was kind of time critical, was perhaps a courtesy too far.
“Are you crazy? Why’d you wait?”
“We needed to be sure there were no side effects,” Sam said with a shrug, and Dean paled a bit further, thinking what that could have meant. The side effects of his physical revival after his panel had cracked were bad enough. There was no way he was going to talk about the horror of having spent however long it was contemplating his navel. It hadn’t helped to find that contemplation was the intended purpose of this emblematic painting phase people had gone through in the sixteenth century. Dean always said history sucked.
He hadn’t survived to the ripe old age of forty-five by wallowing in introspection, that was Sam’s thing, not his. Which raised a new thought.
“Hey! Did I miss a birthday while I was trapped in there? Does that mean I’m a year younger than I was?” Dean thought that was a reasonable question. He didn’t think it warranted a clip round the back of the head from Sam. Besides, doling out smacks to the head was his job. Damn kid was getting far too cocky. Clearly Dean had been away too long. Trouble was, he wasn’t entirely all there now, thanks to his injuries.
The next two, maybe three days, Dean wasn’t sure, went by in a Vicodin-induced haze. At some point Alex turned up, which meant Sam had to mediate between Jody and Alex over whose frigging tooth should get extracted in order to bring Claire back. The two women were agreed that they would both be donating blood. In the meantime, Sam was running round gathering all the ingredients for two sets of rituals, and looking after Dean’s useless invalid ass because he was too fucking crippled to even make it to the bathroom by himself. Which for some obscure reason Sam seemed to think was Sam’s fault. Now Sam wanted him to go lie down while they performed the ritual for Joel.
“No fuck—frigging way. I’m staying here,” Dean asserted, belatedly modifying his language for Alex’s sake. He set aside the two Vicodin Sam just handed him; he wanted to be awake for this. He’d have folded his arms but the plaster on his left one rather hampered that gesture, so he settled for giving Sam his best stubborn look instead. Sam gave him a hard stare then nodded. Okay then.
By the time Sam started up the first of the rituals, Dean’s leg and arm were throbbing in time to every beat of his heart, but he felt truly present for the first time in an age. Despite that, even though his focus was laser sharp, he still couldn’t have said exactly how Joel materialised into his own physical form, though he was pretty sure he saw the little boy’s soul glowing as it was syphoned out of the painting and got caught in the net made of Pearl’s hair strung up between the original sorcerous panel and Sam’s new one.
Huh, so that’s how it was done. Damn, but his little brother was just as sharp as he was when he went to Stanford all those years ago, and Dean couldn’t help the swell of pride in his chest at that knowledge.
Sam didn’t take much time to rest up or savour Pearl’s joy at being reunited with her son before going through the same motions to bring back Claire. This time the net was woven of Jody and Alex’s hair, and they’d finally compromised on using Jody’s tooth and Alex’s blood. This was the one Sam was most concerned about, as he wasn’t sure that love would be enough.
“Family,” Dean said with the voice of authority when Sam raised his fears, “don’t end with blood.” Dean never doubted it, and he was proved right when Claire materialised, a pale imitation of her normal vibrant, aggressive self. Claire was in a pitiful state, the worst of the three, having been trapped the longest. She was scooped up into a tearful embrace by Jody and Alex, and escorted by Sam to the bedroom already set up with IVs to ensure her survival. Jody had agreed taking the two of them to hospital in Lebanon would likely raise too many suspicions after Dean’s admission – the admission of three people all suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration would demand better explanations than they had right now.
Pearl on the other hand couldn’t take any chances with her child. Dean understood that completely, but when he tried to help, Sam brushed him off. Seemed little bro’ had it all in hand. Sam disappeared with Pearl and the kid, presumably taking them to Lebanon’s hospital, which left Dean sitting on his newly bony ass for a couple of hours that felt like much, much longer, especially when Dean couldn’t even haul his sorry ass to the fridge to grab a beer – or better still a fifth of whiskey to dull this fucking pain. He glared at the crutches propped against the mahogany table. The fuckers were mocking his inability to use them. Last time he’d tried he’d ended up in a compromising position, ass up over the table, having managed one stride before face planting. In spite of that, he was still tempted to have another go.
After less than an hour, Dean was regretting his decision to come off the Vicodin, and that the chair he was sitting on was out of reach of the two tablets he’d put aside that morning. He really regretted not having asked Sam to settle him down in his own room before leaving the bunker. At least there he could have watched some porn on his laptop. Stuck in the library, he had nothing to distract him from worrying about Claire, apart from his attempts not to gag at the cloying smell leftover from the soul-summoning ritual, and stare blindly at the dusty tomes Sam had piled up on the table. Typically, all he had to do was stretch out a hand to reach those. Maybe he’d get desperate enough in a minute; at least he could use that fat leather-bound book on top of the pile to bludgeon himself into unconsciousness.
“Still wallowing in self pity, I see,” came a female voice from behind him, making Dean startle into half standing, forgetting his broken leg, before the pain kicked in and knocked him back into his chair, gasping.
“Fuck, Billie,” Dean said as the reaper walked round the table, trailing a dusky finger along its surface as if testing for dust. “I thought reapers were just collectors not the ones doing the killing. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Billie turned those dark, fathomless eyes onto Dean and he suppressed a shudder.
“Don’t worry, Dean, I’m not going to reap someone who isn’t dead yet, however much they deserve it.”
Dean opened his mouth to make some sort of joke, but Billie forestalled him. She gestured to the painted panels, still leaning against the library walls. “I’m here for them.”
Dean stared at the panels, at all the beautifully detailed miniatures that populated each painting. There was a woman in Puritan dress standing by a well; a child, no more than four years old, sitting in the doorway of a bell tower; a man in a top hat like Abe Lincoln used to wear; another man with grey hair holding a rapier. Time moved more slowly in the painting, but not slow enough to save them all. So many people, all trapped there for centuries with no sustenance for their transformed bodies.
Dean understood, only too well.
“Their souls,” he said. “You want their souls.”
Billie had moved and was standing next to the panel Marvin Leigh was painted into, her expression unreadable.
“That one there,” Dean said, pointing to Marvin. “Can he be saved? Like me, like the other two?”
She passed a hand over the painting and shook her head. Dean took a deep breath.
“Okay then. How do we set their souls free?”
“Burn them.”
Dean chewed his bottom lip. “They won’t feel it, right?”
Billie’s dark gaze pinned him in place more effectively than his broken limbs, but this time, there was compassion in her eyes.
“They might. But their bodies are wasted away or dead, and their souls will be trapped there forever if you don’t free them. A little pain is worth the risk, don’t you think?”
Dean thought about how much pain and how much risk he and Sam had faced over the years, and gritted his teeth.
“Help me with those crutches, will you?”
0x0x0x0
It was nearly dark when Sam pulled up outside the bunker, but he was just in time to glimpse someone who wasn’t Dean carrying a long, oblong object wrapped in hessian across the path from the bunker’s garage entrance. Whoever it was didn’t look around or acknowledge Sam’s presence before disappearing into the bushes. Sam put the Impala into park and climbed out as quickly as he could. Finding a gap in the undergrowth, Sam followed the path the stranger had made until he came to a small clearing.
Dean was standing with his back to the path, awkwardly balanced on his crutches. Even in the half light of dusk, Sam could see from the tension in Dean’s shoulders the amount of pain he was in, but there was nothing but determination showing in the line of Dean’s profile. The person Sam had followed was laying their burden down on a haphazard heap of similar shaped objects piled up at the centre of the glade. Now she was in the open, Sam could see that it was a woman, but even when she stood up and moved out of the shadows, it took Sam a moment to recognise her. When he did, fear was a chilly wind on the back of his neck. He forced one foot forward, then the other, until he was standing next to Dean, locking gazes with Billie the Reaper over the top of the pile of wooden boards that he belatedly realised were the panels from Lady Drury’s closet.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said, gently bumping Sam’s shoulder as if he knew what Sam was feeling, suddenly encountering Billie again. Which, after so many years together, he probably did. Billie turned her dark gaze onto the heap of wood, which was a blessing. Sam didn’t want that laser focus on him now, or ever, come to that.
Billie bent down and grabbed something from a wicker basket at her feet. She stepped forward and threw whatever it was onto the panels, and Sam caught a whiff of something bitter and herbal.
“Make yourself useful, Big W,” Billie said, and Sam realised with a shock that she meant him. Dean grinned at Sam’s discomfort, the douche, before he elaborated. “Pour the oil from that flask onto the pyre and let’s light this bitch up.”
Oh. Right. Sam might be physically slower than he used to be, but he was still quick enough on the uptake. He understood now. Billie was here for the souls.
The oil coated his fingers as Sam unstoppered the flask. It smelled like Catholicism. Sam wondered if it was Holy Oil, though the fragrance was sharper than he remembered. He sprinkled it liberally over the painted panels. The oil glistened as it ran down the painted faces of the imprisoned people, traced the contours of strange twisted trees and fantastical creatures. He pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket and touched the pale orange flame to the edge of the nearest panel. The fire kindled quickly, its flames flaring high, as if fuelled by gas jets. Sam jumped backwards with an alacrity he hadn’t thought he was capable of achieving, narrowly avoiding being scorched.
The old, dry wood crackled and popped like campfires when he was a kid, and Sam was momentarily filled with a longing for Smores and burnt coffee. That inappropriate craving was dispersed like smoke when the first of the many souls rose up from the heart of the fire. A glowing thread of white light, the soul snaked out of the flames, tentative and fragile as gossamer. Another thread joined it, then another. Soon the bright white of the many souls outshone the warmer reds and oranges of the fire, as the strands twisted and wove together in a strange and beautiful interlace of light, hovering above their heads.
Billie stepped forward, arms raised, and the whole mass of souls swirled into a tornado-like column centred on the curvaceous Reaper. Sam felt Dean’s shoulder tremble, and almost unconsciously, he slid his arm round his brother. His excuse may have been that he was propping Dean up, making himself a human crutch, but really, Sam was holding on because that was what Sam did. He held onto his brother because Dean was all he had left. The fire was burning low, its fuel nearly consumed, and the clearing was quiet except for the sound of his and Dean’s breathing, and the rustle of the cool breeze stirred up by the passing of the souls.
The soul-light brightened into a magnesium-bright flare that burned through Sam’s eyelids even after he’d squeezed them tight shut. When he risked opening his eyes again, Billie was still there, her long dark curls unruffled in the afterglow of so many long-awaited deaths. Sam felt Dean shudder a little as Billie turned her attention on them, and involuntarily tightened his grip on his brother. It was a measure of Dean’s fear and respect for Billie that any protest about not being a girl was suppressed for the moment, though Sam was sure Dean’s customary bravado would be back in place once the Reaper left them alone.
There was an expression on Billie’s face that Sam didn’t recognise until she spoke, and then he realised. It was compassion.
“Winchesters,” she said, and for the first time, their name didn’t sound like censure, coming from her lips. “You did a good thing – a right thing – today. I won’t forget it.”
She glowed briefly with a pale light like moonlight, then she was gone, leaving Sam and Dean in a darkness lit only by the faint red embers of the dying bonfire.
“D’you think we won some brownie points there, Sammy?” Dean said, after a moment’s silence. He didn’t pull out of Sam’s embrace, and Sam didn’t think about letting go, liking the feel of Dean’s warmth pressed against his side. Sam tilted his head a little towards his brother, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and incense that had gathered in Dean’s hair.
“I don’t know, Dean,” he replied. “Heaven, Hell or the Empty, it doesn’t matter as long as we are together in the end, right?”
Dean grunted, probably aiming for non-committal, but Sam could feel him smiling, and that was enough.
Beautiful gif by entirely-the-wrong-sort
0x0x0x0
The first sensation to hit Dean was pain. Which figured – story of his life after all. The second was a raging thirst so bad he felt he’d been desiccated, staked out in a desert for a few days and left to dry like a piece of meat. Third was his default setting – a wave of near panic. Where was Sam?
His eyes were open but his vision was blurred, he couldn’t get a fix on anything much more than a few shapes and colours moving around in front of his face. Which brought him to another unpleasant realisation. He couldn’t move, not even a muscle, not so much as a twitch. He thought there might be voices talking, but the sounds were muffled so he couldn’t make out any understandable words. So, yeah. He was awake, but completely helpless, and this fucking sucked.
Some time passed, Dean had no way of measuring it, other than the level of pain in his left leg and left arm seemed to be increasing, until it became his universe. It was so overwhelming, he could think of nothing else. It wasn’t until some time later Dean noticed he wasn’t breathing. Well, fuck. Was this the Empty? Was he dead?
More time slipped away, how much, how long? Pain and questions were all he was left with. The light was constant, no sunrise or sunset, no night or day. The external voices came and went but never grew more comprehensible – he had no idea if they were male or female, or even if they were human. His constant companions were hunger, thirst and pain, closely followed by loneliness and boredom. One thing to be said about Hell, he’d rarely been alone, and the inventiveness of the tortures Alastair had devised for him could be called a lot of things, but tedious wasn’t one of them. Who’d have thought anything could make him nostalgic for Hell?
Once he’d become aware again, there was no way back to an unconscious state and nowhere to hide. However bad the pain got, he remained awake and aware and if he’d been able to scream, he thought his throat would have been raw. Maybe he should be thankful he had no measure for time, no scope for the endless now. He wasn’t. Grateful that is. What he was? Fucking pissed, that’s what. He clung to the anger – it was his only shield against the weeping that threatened to well up and he knew once he started on that route he’d drown in his non-existent tears. Thankfully he wasn’t that big of a girl.
At some point he was distracted from the pain and tedium by something new. There was a kind of tugging. Something niggling at his edges, irritating as an itch you can’t scratch. It took a while for a swirl of colour to register over the whitewash of agony from his leg and arm, but once he noticed it, it seemed to gain strength from his attention. Something was happening something was…
Sensation flooded him. The smell of paint overlaid with something more familiar, metallic and terrifying – blood, his brain told him it was blood – and bitter herbs burning. All scents that spoke of danger on so many levels – not least of which was the belated realisation that to be able to smell meant he must be breathing again. Over and above the still incomprehensible murmuring of voices was the thudding, loud in his ears, of a heartbeat – his heartbeat. Another resurrection? Maybe, though it didn’t bear much resemblance to waking up in his coffin after Cas pulled him out of Hell; neither did it remind him of Crowley making him into a demon. This was both a more gradual and more pain-filled experience.
His vision cleared, colours and shapes sharpening into focus and showing him the most important thing in his universe – the sharp, anxious features of Sam’s face. Pain was a constant, grounding him even though every exposed inch of his skin was being flayed – exaggeration? Probably…he hoped.
There was a swooping moment of disorientation where he seemed to be in two – no, three – places at once, then he was snagged on a thread, a tangle of them, that trapped him and stopped him from going…somewhere. He didn’t know where but he assumed it wouldn’t have been anywhere good, if the relieved expression on Sam’s face was anything to go by.
He was in the middle of the bunker library, without the faintest idea how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was being in that weird room in some woman’s house, standing in front of the same painted panel that was now propped up against a chair right in front of him.
Any further speculation was curtailed when his left leg protested vehemently at having weight on it, and he lurched to one side, listing like a drunken sailor in a storm. Sam caught him before he toppled overboard – and that was enough of that analogy, thanks very much. Dean didn’t even like boats.
“F-fuck, Sammy,” Dean’s words stuttered, his mouth so stiff, it was almost as if he was made of wood. “Think m’leg’s broken.” Sam was practically carrying him, and that wasn’t how things should go. Dean wasn’t that much of a girl that he’d allow his little brother do all the work, injured or not. So he did his best to stay upright, to share some of the burden, but the creeping blackness at the edges of his vision told him to forget anything so ambitious right now. The last thing he heard before passing out was Sam whispering apologies into his ear. Fuckin’ kid was always blaming himself for something.
And on that thought, Dean slid under without so much as a ripple.
0x0x0x0
When Dean surfaced again, it was to a more familiar feeling – a lazy swimming in the balmy Gulf Stream that signified morphine. The air was too warm, unmistakeably clinical, with overtones of fresh sweaty Sam, and Dean wanted to sink back down again, enjoy wallowing in drug-induced contentment. Of course, he didn’t. He was constitutionally incapable of wallowing when he knew Sam would be worrying – and besides, the sharp needle of curiosity was pricking him. With an effort, he opened his eyes.
Sure enough, a cocoon of pasty hospital green greeted him, along with with the altogether more reassuring sight of his gigantic brother folded uncomfortably into one of those uncomfortable plastic-covered chairs that only seem to appear at hospital bedsides. Dean was rather miffed to find that the rhythmic rumbling interrupted by random snuffling he’d thought to be a malfunctioning air-con unit was in fact Sam, who was demonstrating his lack of worry about Dean by sleeping through Dean’s awakening. Typical.
Which left Dean none the wiser as to how he’d ended up in hospital for the umpteenth time in his career. He tried to backtrack but got no further than a jumbled up mess of memories about the bunker, some dumbass ancient paintings and a thin blonde chick before he came up against a fetid dark pool of introspection that had him backpedalling faster than you could say Christo to a demon. All the pleasant warmth the morphine had induced was dispelled, and Dean couldn’t help shuddering. He’d recognised it as a place he didn’t want to go back to, and he had a horrible feeling he’d already spent more time there than he cared to remember.
Now wide awake, and feeling as if someone had upended a bucket of icy water over his head, Dean looked around for distractions and discovered a) it wasn’t just his leg that was broken but his left arm as well, and b) Sam hadn’t come unscathed through whatever it was that had happened to them. Dean’s attention honed in on the latter, a well worn route that he was comfortable following. Now his vision was clear, Dean could see how worn and tired Sam looked, his glasses askew on his pointy nose. Dean’s heart lurched when he took in the way Sam was cradling his left hand to his chest, focussing on Sam’s bandaged pinky finger, then running his gaze over the rest of Sam’s body, looking for other signs of damage. He relaxed a little when he came up with nothing else, only Winchester wear and tear, and the creeping cracks and lines of aging – which were bad enough. Dean hated to see his little brother growing old, just as he’d hated to see little Sammy’s innocence wiped away by monsters all those years ago. Fuck inevitability; Dean still wished he could fight it.
After trying and failing to sit up, Dean decided that fighting of any kind was probably going to have to wait a few hours, maybe a few days. The effort left him dizzy and sweating, and the quiet whimper he gave out woke Sam, which was embarrassing.
“Hey,” Sam said, leaning forward and putting one large hand on Dean’s good arm. Fuck if it didn’t feel like a ton weight and what the hell was wrong with him? Surely this weakness was more than the good drugs and a couple of broken bones.
“W’h’p’n?” was the best Dean could manage, but after forty-odd years, luckily Sam was fluent in Dean-speak. Typical Sam, he replied to Dean’s question with one of his own.
“What do you remember?”
Good question. What did Dean remember? Or rather, what did he remember that he was willing to share? He took advantage of the few moments sipping at the water Sam gave him to gather his thoughts. It was lukewarm and tasted like plastic but it was glorious.
“Dean?”
Dean jolted out of the blissful rehydrating haze he’d fallen into, then winced when the movement jarred his broken bones. Strangest fucking injuries he’d ever had, and that was saying something.
“Sorry, m’ so thirsty, Sammy,” he croaked, realising it was true. He was as parched as Nevada, and hungry too. He looked at his hand where he was still clutching the now empty cup, and did a double take. He put the cup down carefully, holding his hand up in front of his face. Apart from feeling like his limb weighed a ton, he was part horrified, part fascinated to see how all the tendons stood out over the bones, the muscle and flesh wasted away. Great. He’d come back from wherever he’d been looking like a freaking skeleton. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his head was filled to bursting with every single crappy decision he’d ever made, every wrong action he’d ever taken and every bad word he’d ever spoken. He didn’t notice his hand had started shaking until Sam’s giant mitt wrapped round his fingers and gently lowered his hand onto his stomach.
“Dean,” Sam repeated, but this time there was no interrogation in his tone, only concern, and it was all too much. A trembling spread like contagion through his whole body, and before he knew what was happening, tears were streaming down his face and he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run away, he wanted to sink through the bed and disappear, he wanted…
Then Sam was climbing onto the damn bed, all tangled up with Dean’s IVs and just smothered him. Those ridiculously long arms wrapped around Dean until all the wanting was squeezed out of him and the shaking finally stopped. For a long time, Sam didn’t let go, and Dean didn’t move, and they sat listening to each other’s breathing, as if they both understood that words were unnecessary encumbrances after all these years. Too easily misunderstood, too revealing, too concealing, too inadequate.
0x0x0x0
Pearl and Jody were in the bunker, waiting, when Sam brought Dean home – as usual discharged AMA. Using crutches was hard with one arm in plaster as well as the leg, so Dean had to lean on Sam in order to negotiate the bunker stairs – in fact, Sam was practically carrying him, though Dean would never admit it. Dean didn’t want to think about what the look of shock on Jody’s face meant about the state of his body; he’d managed to avoid mirrors since he’d woken up. Apparently Sam had shaved a substantial beard off for him while he’d been playing Mr Comatose in the hospital. Turned out he’d only been there long enough to get his leg and arm set and a bunch of IV nutrients shoved into his veins to counteract what appeared to be several weeks’ worth of starvation. As Sam had pointed out, he was lucky that the whole time he’d spent as a wall painting hadn’t counted or he’d have been a desiccated corpse by now. Which was why Dean had insisted on getting back to the bunker as quick as possible, because he was only too aware Claire had been trapped for several months longer than him and Joel.
Once Dean was settled with his leg propped up on a chair, white faced and breathing heavily, and longing for his morphine drip, Pearl presented her idea of using a tooth for the bone part of the recipe, as a less drastic alternative to Sam’s self-mutilation. That was when Dean found out that Sam had chopped off the first joint of his left pinky finger to provide both the blood and bone part of the spell. Dean ranted for several minutes over this, and Sam allowed him to let off steam, but they both knew each of them would cut off entire limbs to save each other. From the expressions on their faces, everyone there knew Dean’s bluster came from very weak ground, but indulged him anyway. Dean didn’t let on, but he appreciated the courtesy.
Especially when he discovered that the two girls had been waiting on him and Sam before trying the ritual again to free Claire and little Joel. Which, after finding out that this whole deal was kind of time critical, was perhaps a courtesy too far.
“Are you crazy? Why’d you wait?”
“We needed to be sure there were no side effects,” Sam said with a shrug, and Dean paled a bit further, thinking what that could have meant. The side effects of his physical revival after his panel had cracked were bad enough. There was no way he was going to talk about the horror of having spent however long it was contemplating his navel. It hadn’t helped to find that contemplation was the intended purpose of this emblematic painting phase people had gone through in the sixteenth century. Dean always said history sucked.
He hadn’t survived to the ripe old age of forty-five by wallowing in introspection, that was Sam’s thing, not his. Which raised a new thought.
“Hey! Did I miss a birthday while I was trapped in there? Does that mean I’m a year younger than I was?” Dean thought that was a reasonable question. He didn’t think it warranted a clip round the back of the head from Sam. Besides, doling out smacks to the head was his job. Damn kid was getting far too cocky. Clearly Dean had been away too long. Trouble was, he wasn’t entirely all there now, thanks to his injuries.
The next two, maybe three days, Dean wasn’t sure, went by in a Vicodin-induced haze. At some point Alex turned up, which meant Sam had to mediate between Jody and Alex over whose frigging tooth should get extracted in order to bring Claire back. The two women were agreed that they would both be donating blood. In the meantime, Sam was running round gathering all the ingredients for two sets of rituals, and looking after Dean’s useless invalid ass because he was too fucking crippled to even make it to the bathroom by himself. Which for some obscure reason Sam seemed to think was Sam’s fault. Now Sam wanted him to go lie down while they performed the ritual for Joel.
“No fuck—frigging way. I’m staying here,” Dean asserted, belatedly modifying his language for Alex’s sake. He set aside the two Vicodin Sam just handed him; he wanted to be awake for this. He’d have folded his arms but the plaster on his left one rather hampered that gesture, so he settled for giving Sam his best stubborn look instead. Sam gave him a hard stare then nodded. Okay then.
By the time Sam started up the first of the rituals, Dean’s leg and arm were throbbing in time to every beat of his heart, but he felt truly present for the first time in an age. Despite that, even though his focus was laser sharp, he still couldn’t have said exactly how Joel materialised into his own physical form, though he was pretty sure he saw the little boy’s soul glowing as it was syphoned out of the painting and got caught in the net made of Pearl’s hair strung up between the original sorcerous panel and Sam’s new one.
Huh, so that’s how it was done. Damn, but his little brother was just as sharp as he was when he went to Stanford all those years ago, and Dean couldn’t help the swell of pride in his chest at that knowledge.
Sam didn’t take much time to rest up or savour Pearl’s joy at being reunited with her son before going through the same motions to bring back Claire. This time the net was woven of Jody and Alex’s hair, and they’d finally compromised on using Jody’s tooth and Alex’s blood. This was the one Sam was most concerned about, as he wasn’t sure that love would be enough.
“Family,” Dean said with the voice of authority when Sam raised his fears, “don’t end with blood.” Dean never doubted it, and he was proved right when Claire materialised, a pale imitation of her normal vibrant, aggressive self. Claire was in a pitiful state, the worst of the three, having been trapped the longest. She was scooped up into a tearful embrace by Jody and Alex, and escorted by Sam to the bedroom already set up with IVs to ensure her survival. Jody had agreed taking the two of them to hospital in Lebanon would likely raise too many suspicions after Dean’s admission – the admission of three people all suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration would demand better explanations than they had right now.
Pearl on the other hand couldn’t take any chances with her child. Dean understood that completely, but when he tried to help, Sam brushed him off. Seemed little bro’ had it all in hand. Sam disappeared with Pearl and the kid, presumably taking them to Lebanon’s hospital, which left Dean sitting on his newly bony ass for a couple of hours that felt like much, much longer, especially when Dean couldn’t even haul his sorry ass to the fridge to grab a beer – or better still a fifth of whiskey to dull this fucking pain. He glared at the crutches propped against the mahogany table. The fuckers were mocking his inability to use them. Last time he’d tried he’d ended up in a compromising position, ass up over the table, having managed one stride before face planting. In spite of that, he was still tempted to have another go.
After less than an hour, Dean was regretting his decision to come off the Vicodin, and that the chair he was sitting on was out of reach of the two tablets he’d put aside that morning. He really regretted not having asked Sam to settle him down in his own room before leaving the bunker. At least there he could have watched some porn on his laptop. Stuck in the library, he had nothing to distract him from worrying about Claire, apart from his attempts not to gag at the cloying smell leftover from the soul-summoning ritual, and stare blindly at the dusty tomes Sam had piled up on the table. Typically, all he had to do was stretch out a hand to reach those. Maybe he’d get desperate enough in a minute; at least he could use that fat leather-bound book on top of the pile to bludgeon himself into unconsciousness.
“Still wallowing in self pity, I see,” came a female voice from behind him, making Dean startle into half standing, forgetting his broken leg, before the pain kicked in and knocked him back into his chair, gasping.
“Fuck, Billie,” Dean said as the reaper walked round the table, trailing a dusky finger along its surface as if testing for dust. “I thought reapers were just collectors not the ones doing the killing. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Billie turned those dark, fathomless eyes onto Dean and he suppressed a shudder.
“Don’t worry, Dean, I’m not going to reap someone who isn’t dead yet, however much they deserve it.”
Dean opened his mouth to make some sort of joke, but Billie forestalled him. She gestured to the painted panels, still leaning against the library walls. “I’m here for them.”
Dean stared at the panels, at all the beautifully detailed miniatures that populated each painting. There was a woman in Puritan dress standing by a well; a child, no more than four years old, sitting in the doorway of a bell tower; a man in a top hat like Abe Lincoln used to wear; another man with grey hair holding a rapier. Time moved more slowly in the painting, but not slow enough to save them all. So many people, all trapped there for centuries with no sustenance for their transformed bodies.
Dean understood, only too well.
“Their souls,” he said. “You want their souls.”
Billie had moved and was standing next to the panel Marvin Leigh was painted into, her expression unreadable.
“That one there,” Dean said, pointing to Marvin. “Can he be saved? Like me, like the other two?”
She passed a hand over the painting and shook her head. Dean took a deep breath.
“Okay then. How do we set their souls free?”
“Burn them.”
Dean chewed his bottom lip. “They won’t feel it, right?”
Billie’s dark gaze pinned him in place more effectively than his broken limbs, but this time, there was compassion in her eyes.
“They might. But their bodies are wasted away or dead, and their souls will be trapped there forever if you don’t free them. A little pain is worth the risk, don’t you think?”
Dean thought about how much pain and how much risk he and Sam had faced over the years, and gritted his teeth.
“Help me with those crutches, will you?”
0x0x0x0
It was nearly dark when Sam pulled up outside the bunker, but he was just in time to glimpse someone who wasn’t Dean carrying a long, oblong object wrapped in hessian across the path from the bunker’s garage entrance. Whoever it was didn’t look around or acknowledge Sam’s presence before disappearing into the bushes. Sam put the Impala into park and climbed out as quickly as he could. Finding a gap in the undergrowth, Sam followed the path the stranger had made until he came to a small clearing.
Dean was standing with his back to the path, awkwardly balanced on his crutches. Even in the half light of dusk, Sam could see from the tension in Dean’s shoulders the amount of pain he was in, but there was nothing but determination showing in the line of Dean’s profile. The person Sam had followed was laying their burden down on a haphazard heap of similar shaped objects piled up at the centre of the glade. Now she was in the open, Sam could see that it was a woman, but even when she stood up and moved out of the shadows, it took Sam a moment to recognise her. When he did, fear was a chilly wind on the back of his neck. He forced one foot forward, then the other, until he was standing next to Dean, locking gazes with Billie the Reaper over the top of the pile of wooden boards that he belatedly realised were the panels from Lady Drury’s closet.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said, gently bumping Sam’s shoulder as if he knew what Sam was feeling, suddenly encountering Billie again. Which, after so many years together, he probably did. Billie turned her dark gaze onto the heap of wood, which was a blessing. Sam didn’t want that laser focus on him now, or ever, come to that.
Billie bent down and grabbed something from a wicker basket at her feet. She stepped forward and threw whatever it was onto the panels, and Sam caught a whiff of something bitter and herbal.
“Make yourself useful, Big W,” Billie said, and Sam realised with a shock that she meant him. Dean grinned at Sam’s discomfort, the douche, before he elaborated. “Pour the oil from that flask onto the pyre and let’s light this bitch up.”
Oh. Right. Sam might be physically slower than he used to be, but he was still quick enough on the uptake. He understood now. Billie was here for the souls.
The oil coated his fingers as Sam unstoppered the flask. It smelled like Catholicism. Sam wondered if it was Holy Oil, though the fragrance was sharper than he remembered. He sprinkled it liberally over the painted panels. The oil glistened as it ran down the painted faces of the imprisoned people, traced the contours of strange twisted trees and fantastical creatures. He pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket and touched the pale orange flame to the edge of the nearest panel. The fire kindled quickly, its flames flaring high, as if fuelled by gas jets. Sam jumped backwards with an alacrity he hadn’t thought he was capable of achieving, narrowly avoiding being scorched.
The old, dry wood crackled and popped like campfires when he was a kid, and Sam was momentarily filled with a longing for Smores and burnt coffee. That inappropriate craving was dispersed like smoke when the first of the many souls rose up from the heart of the fire. A glowing thread of white light, the soul snaked out of the flames, tentative and fragile as gossamer. Another thread joined it, then another. Soon the bright white of the many souls outshone the warmer reds and oranges of the fire, as the strands twisted and wove together in a strange and beautiful interlace of light, hovering above their heads.
Billie stepped forward, arms raised, and the whole mass of souls swirled into a tornado-like column centred on the curvaceous Reaper. Sam felt Dean’s shoulder tremble, and almost unconsciously, he slid his arm round his brother. His excuse may have been that he was propping Dean up, making himself a human crutch, but really, Sam was holding on because that was what Sam did. He held onto his brother because Dean was all he had left. The fire was burning low, its fuel nearly consumed, and the clearing was quiet except for the sound of his and Dean’s breathing, and the rustle of the cool breeze stirred up by the passing of the souls.
The soul-light brightened into a magnesium-bright flare that burned through Sam’s eyelids even after he’d squeezed them tight shut. When he risked opening his eyes again, Billie was still there, her long dark curls unruffled in the afterglow of so many long-awaited deaths. Sam felt Dean shudder a little as Billie turned her attention on them, and involuntarily tightened his grip on his brother. It was a measure of Dean’s fear and respect for Billie that any protest about not being a girl was suppressed for the moment, though Sam was sure Dean’s customary bravado would be back in place once the Reaper left them alone.
There was an expression on Billie’s face that Sam didn’t recognise until she spoke, and then he realised. It was compassion.
“Winchesters,” she said, and for the first time, their name didn’t sound like censure, coming from her lips. “You did a good thing – a right thing – today. I won’t forget it.”
She glowed briefly with a pale light like moonlight, then she was gone, leaving Sam and Dean in a darkness lit only by the faint red embers of the dying bonfire.
“D’you think we won some brownie points there, Sammy?” Dean said, after a moment’s silence. He didn’t pull out of Sam’s embrace, and Sam didn’t think about letting go, liking the feel of Dean’s warmth pressed against his side. Sam tilted his head a little towards his brother, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and incense that had gathered in Dean’s hair.
“I don’t know, Dean,” he replied. “Heaven, Hell or the Empty, it doesn’t matter as long as we are together in the end, right?”
Dean grunted, probably aiming for non-committal, but Sam could feel him smiling, and that was enough.
Beautiful gif by entirely-the-wrong-sort
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 03:03 pm (UTC)(As someone who also takes my progressive lens glasses off to read, and wonders why I bothered with the extra expense... you nailed the aging stuff! And the mystery, and the OCs, and the brotherly feels....)
Two thumbs up!
no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 03:13 pm (UTC)Your cast of characters was perfect and it was great seeing Billie, Alex, Claire and Jody, as well as your original characters. I also really appreciated the theme of family here and how years later they're still referring to Bobby's "family don't end in blood".
Thank you for sharing :)
no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-01 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-01 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-26 09:23 pm (UTC)I loved Sam smoking pot (I think it's very IC for him,) although I wonder if he would be having such problems (arthritis and bad vision) at 41 already. It's not very old!
I thought the case was creepy, although I wanted to learn more about the backstory of the panels. Was the painter a vindictive witch? Why did the panels start sucking people in?
I liked the idea that being stuck in the painting forces you to contemplate your sins.
I liked that the angels leaving was likened to the elves leaving in LOTR. I liked Alex calling Claire her sister. I liked Joel's mother. I hope she and Joel will be okay.
I also really liked how you used Billie here. You wrote her very IC. And I'm very happy that the souls of the other people were freed and allowed to go on to their next destination.
Very enjoyable casefic!
no subject
Date: 2016-06-26 09:49 pm (UTC)Re: Sam, i was thinking that arthritis often sets in where people have had bad injuries; bones and joints tent to suffer and this can happen younger than normal. As for the eyesight, well, that can start to deteriorate anytime, so forties isn't unimaginable, I hope!
I kind of wanted the panels to remain a mystery - though in my head, it wasn't a curse or a witch, more something to do with the power of prayer and the contemplation they were painted to aid somehow going wrong, getting twisted. So perhaps it would be something like a tulpa, created from the force of belief then getting out of control over the years as it swallowed its victims up.