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apocalypsosTitle: They Say It's Wonderful
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for language)
Pairing: Nothing, really, unless you count the occasional Sam/Jess reference
Warning: Death and violence, but not much.
Disclaimer: Supernatural and all associated characters are not mine. I'm just playing with them, because making my Hurley and Jerry Garcia dolls do this stuff is not half as much fun.
Summary: What if Mary's death hadn't been the only tragedy that night?
Author's note: AU from the flashback to that night. I just found myself wondering what would have happened if that night had ended a little differently, so now there is fic. :)
They Say It's Wonderful
Three months into the road trip
"Dean?"
Dean doesn't tear his gaze away from the fast food joints and cheap motels lining the road when he says, "Yeah, Sammy?"
I'm still in that hazy fog between being asleep and being awake, or else I wouldn't ask. But my brain can't stop my mouth from blurting out, "You didn't see her die."
The Impala almost quivers in response, even though Dean doesn't flinch and the car's steering wheel remains still under Dean's one-handed grasp. His knuckles grow white as his fingers tighten on the wheel, and later on, when he's still not speaking to me, I'll wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
"Don't start this again," he says.
But I keep going, because I'm an idiot, or I'm insane, or I'm still wandering around the goddamn dream I just had. "You were still out in the hallway when Dad sent you outside," I hear myself say. "I mean, you did see her die, just not with your eyes." I turn to look at him with eyes still clouded with sleep and say, "Didn't you?"
The dreams don't lie. This I've learned from experience. But Dean says nothing in response, putting both of his hands on the steering wheel and clenching until I'm positive I'm about to hear bones crack.
A minute later, the wail of Quiet Riot grows noticably louder as the radio's volume turns up without anyone touching it.
We both try to pretend it's simply a quirk of the Impala. We've got a lot of practice at that by now.
********
Early June
The guy who broke into his apartment last month has come back to steal a beer.
Michael Ryan's eyes crack open as his dreams fade away like the pounding music from a departing car. His mind brims with meandering thoughts not his own --
*be real cool about the whole thing, crack open a window, slip right in, and a beer or two, maybe even some chips*
-- and Michael can't help but wonder if it's possible for the thief in the car outside his apartment building to broadcast his thoughts any louder. Maybe with a megaphone or a set of massive speakers or something. Hell, he's amazed he's the only one awake during all of this.
His mind fills with images of the man who broke in weeks ago returning to finish what he started, of the inept thief who'd only rifled through his drawers before taking his comb and his goddamn toothbrush. Michael tried to figure out for days what the hell that was all about -- his guess had been a really lame scavenger hunt, while his girlfriend's guess had been someone with a used hygiene product fetish, which had both grossed them out and killed them with laughter -- and now the jerk is back for more.
He would laugh, if he weren't about to put up with the annoyance of getting the locks replaced again.
Michael gets out of bed riding high on someone else's adrenaline, then grabs his sneakers and jeans and heads into the bathroom to change. His girlfriend barely moves in the bed as he pads barefoot into the next room, but then again, she'll sleep through anything that's not her alarm clock. College does that to you, turning some free weekends into marathons to see just how long you can sleep in one blissfully neverending stretch, and she's spent the last two weekend writing papers and studying for finals. She's earned the extra sleep, he thinks, tugging his jeans on over his boxers.
He makes it through the apartment building without latching onto anyone else's thoughts, a minor miracle in a complex filled with either anxious students pulling all-nighters before the last midterms or weekend partiers just passed out in their beds. Michael debates whether or not to try and sneak around to the back door, maybe catch the bastard by surprise, but he's still catching that nervous internal monologue --
*if he has cable, because if he has cable, maybe we can watch a game or something, except it's the middle of the night, and what the hell do college students watch on television anyway*
-- and after careful consideration, Michael figures there's no way he's going to pull off a sneak attack and just heads right out the front door.
Even with the guy letting his train of thought steam right through Michael's brain like goddamn Amtrak, it still takes Michael a minute to spot the car, parked as it is in the pitch black darkness of a spot far from the street lights. An overhanging tree's dangling branches make it that much more difficult, but narrowed eyes and a little concentration leads Michael's gaze to the car, and ultimately to the driver's faintly stunned expression.
He hides it well, though, a cold poker face shielding anything remotely resembling fear. To his credit, he doesn't drive off as Michael approaches, although from the look in his eyes, he's sorely tempted to.
His window is rolled down, and Michael leans down as soon as he gets to the car and sighs. "You suck at this whole burglary thing, you know that?"
The guy in the driver's seat frowns. There's a split second where Michael wonders if he's got the right guy, but he's never been wrong about this sort of thing before. Why start now? "Come again?"
"Two computers, a television, and my DVD collection, and you took my comb and a toothbrush?"
Michael looks in at the guy, feeling almost playful about the whole thing by now, and he finally flashes Michael a disarming yet vaguely guilty smile. From the look on his face, Michael bets that he finds himself in situations like this a lot, and gets in about as much trouble those times as he's getting in now. "Yeah, sorry about that," he says. "I couldn't think of any other way to --"
He chokes on his words suddenly, and Michael blurts out, "Any other way to what?"
The guy in the car says nothing, studiously avoiding his gaze as he runs his hands along the steering wheel in a motion that makes it look as if doing so calls him down.
Scowling, Michael says, "Look, either you tell me who the hell you are, or I'm calling the cops."
The thief looks up at him at that, a muscle in his clenched jaw flickering as he levels his gaze up at Michael and takes a deep breath.
"My name is Dean Winchester," he says, "and I think you might be my brother Sam."
********
Five months into the road trip
"Sam!"
Dean yells my name, the command silent but clear, and I drop to the floor of the school gym just in time for him to fire the shotgun at the ghost standing over me with the axe, a barrage of rock salt sending him off somewhere else for now. The two of us sit there for a long silent moment trying to catch our breath, Dean glancing around the room.
"Where did she go?" he asks.
I shrug, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. "Back home, I guess." The girl we've been trying to protect, Amanda Jenkins, isn't like most of the people we fight the darkness for. We've spent a week in this town investigating the axe-wielding spirit stalking her and her family, and this is the third time she's gotten one look at the evil chasing her and taken off running for home. So many of the people we save freeze up at the sight of whatever creature haunts them, and it's nice for once to protect someone who has enough common sense to run away.
Dean and I never run. I'm starting to think we're really stupid.
Dean holds out his arm to pull me to my feet, and as soon as I grab onto his arm, something flashes through my mind, sharp and quick.
A scream. Amanda's scream, coming from about two hundred feet to the east.
But only in my head.
"We have to go," I say, letting him pull me up and stalking towards the double doors leading outside.
Dean doesn't even bother asking why anymore. He simply grabs his bag and follows after me.
I may be taking back that compliment about her bolting away from danger at the first sign of it. I'll get back to you on that.
********
Early June, later that first night
Michael takes Dean to this diner he goes to sometimes when he wants to study but doesn't want as much background noise as the apartment complex tends to have. The diner sits on a street corner far away from any other buildings, stays open twenty-four hours a day, and usually only has three or four people in it late at night. The handful of memories and voices in his mind when he's here feel practically like white noise, and Michael's gotten to the point where even when it's busy, his mind reverts to the happy static of psychic low gear, if there even is such a thing.
When they arrive, the place isn't packed but it isn't empty, either, and as anxious as the two of them are around one another, it's better than going back to the apartment. Going up to his place would mean Michael having to wake up Jessica and explain the whole confusing situation. Hell, he's still glossing over the reasons he won't play poker with his friends anymore even though she knows he plays like a professional.
It sounds like a stupid idea at first, going anywhere with someone who broke into his apartment and had planned on doing it again, but the thoughts he gleans from Dean's cluttered stream of consciousness are almost too harmless.
They order something -- Michael isn't even paying attention to what, but it sounds like Dean just pick at random off the menu -- and Dean follows that up by reaching into his knapsack and removing a worn, thick leather journal. The covers bulge and the seams are ripped in spots, and when Dean drops it unceremoniously on the table of the booth, it makes a pretty solid thump.
Michael glances up at him for a long moment --
*kid should just read the damn thing, enough information in there to back me up, it's got to be Sam, it's just got to be*
-- then sighs and cracks open the journal.
Newspaper articles and notes on missing children line the pages of the journal, the small neat handwriting crammed together so tightly it looks as if three pages of information has been forced onto the front of one small piece of notebook paper. Photos attached neatly to each page show off a good-looking young family -- a dark-haired man, a beautiful blond woman, a little boy with dark blond hair and a chubby-cheeked baby.
A baby who's supposed to be him.
Michael's eyes narrow as he removes a folded sheet of paper from the journal and opens it, hitching in a breath as soon as he sees the face staring back at him. The picture isn't an exact likeness, that's for sure. He looks vaguely puffy around the edges and his complexion is flat and dull, as if someone painted his face from a detailed description but used a color-by-numbers paint set to do it.
But that's what age progression always looks like, Michael thinks in a stunned sort of way, and he puts the paper face-down on the table as their food arrives.
"This is a joke, right?"
Dean has already taken a sip of his soda, the only thing he could order when he discovered beer wasn't on the menu, and has to swallow it before he can answer. "I wouldn't joke about this," he says.
Yeah, Michael's sure of that -- this is a pretty shitty thing to joke with anyone about -- and when he realizes how that must have sounded, he frowns and says, "Sorry."
Dean's brow furrows as he douses one of his french fries in ketchup, but he doesn't eat it and Michael gets the impression he's ordered the food more to keep his hands occupied than to actually end up anywhere near his mouth. "You telling me it's not possible?"
"I never said that," Michael blurts out. The truth is, it's very possible. The hell if he knows where he came from. His early years are a haze, and the only memory he has from before he was found is of a man ... no, that's being really fucking polite about it. It's of a thing, of a creature with a black hole where his face should be, and Michael's brain always feels the need to add that that empty, dark space isn't even the worst part. The thing looks down at him, always looks down at him, and when he dreams of the damn thing, he always wakes up screaming.
Everything else in his nightmares he's learned to handle, but that ... that's something no one should have to handle.
Shaking the image from his head with a shudder, Michael asks, "How did you find me?"
Dean looks up from the hamburger he's been removing the pickles from, and it's a second too long before he finally answer. "Private investigator," he says, and the word psychic darts through Michael's mind so fast he's sure he missed it. "We've been looking for you ever since the night we lost you."
"We?"
"Me and Dad."
Michael's struck by that, suddenly realizing that he never actually thought of that. He'd occasionally thought of a mother but he'd never actually thought of a dad. He feels like something has stuck in his throat and manages to say in a teasing sort of way, "What, no Mom?"
It's the wrong thing to say, and Michael figures that out almost instantly, even before Dean's expression grows cold and almost empty. He levels his gaze at Michael and says, "She was murdered the night you were taken. By the same son of a bitch who took you."
There's a thousand thoughts on the tip of Michael's tongue -- an apology, a wish he could have met her, a question about what the hell happened to the monster who'd killed his mother and stolen him -- but instead he catches himself focusing on the way Dean keeps talking to him. Like he already knows for a fact that Michael is really his little brother. Like there isn't a question in his mind.
"You can't even be sure it's me," he says, and he wonders if it sounds to Dean like he's whining, because it sure as hell sounds that way to him.
The look on Dean's face softens somewhat, and he looks more sincere than he has all night long for one brief moment. "Not yet," he says, "but I'm getting there."
He reaches into his bag again, and the next thing Michael knows, Dean's shoved a plastic bag into his grasp. Frowning, Michael opens the bag and peers inside. He cocks an eyebrow when he glances over at Dean. "A DNA test?"
"The things you can get off the Internet," Dean says with a smile. "I tried it with the comb and the toothbrush, but it didn't pan out. So, I come to you."
"Don't you mean I come to you before you break into my apartment again?"
"Okay, so maybe you've got a point," he says, and the playfulness in his expression fades the longer he stares across the table at Michael. And just when Michael doesn't think he can feel any more self-conscious, Dean says in this pained sort of voice, "Jesus, where the hell have you been, Sammy?"
There's no urge he has to fight to correct Dean when he calls him Sammy and he's a little grateful for that for Dean's sake. But the mention of where he's been makes it hard for him to speak when he finally says, "I don't know." Michael closes his eyes before continuing, as if desperately trying to grasp for memories in a dark, secret place where there are none to grab for no matter how much he wishes for them. "I can't remember my childhood. They found me lying unconscious in a field in California about nine years ago. I didn't even know who I was."
Yeah, abandoned in a field. Some birth, Michael thinks, in the same sort of sarcastic tone his thoughts always slip into when he starts thinking about his missing years. The years that are a blank fog in his mind, where he can't figure out who had him or what they did to him or what they ... you know, did to him. He wonders sometimes what the hell he is when he hear voices and sense emotions, when he dreams of dark men with no face and a woman he can't see floating over him as she bursts into flames.
He's half tempted to ask Dean how their mother was murdered but can't find the words.
It takes a moment for Michael to realize that Dean's slightly stricken expression isn't for his whole story, but simply for the bit about how long he was gone. "What was the date?"
"What?"
"The date," Dean says. He's long ago abandoned the food, and his hands press down hard on the edge of the table. "What day did they find you?"
Michael frowns. "November 2, 1996. What does that have to do with anything?"
Dean goes cold and frozen and distant for a long, harsh minute --
*november second, thirteen years, november second, thirteen years*
-- and Michael's almost afraid he's going to pass out, the way his eyes go just wide enough for concern. But he finally recovers whatever cool he's lost, and he grins. "No reason," he says, then leans back in his chair. "So, Sammy --"
"Michael."
"Mike, then."
"Michael."
Dean waves his hand distractedly towards the far side of the diner. "Sorry, can't hear you over the TV."
Skeptically, Michael glances over at the TV on the other side of the diner, the volume loud enough for that section of the dining room but hard to hear from where they're sitting. If this is what having an older brother is like, Michael is going to have to add grinding his teeth to his bad late-night habits.
They're there for another hour and a half, discussing the kind of awkward small talk you have to get out of the way in a situation like that. Michael plans to go to law school and gets perfect grades. Dean works as a mechanic, or at least he says he does. Michael has Jessica. Dean has his beloved Impala, and waxes rhapsodic about the damn thing for ten straight minutes before Michael makes a crack about the two of them getting a room. And Dad travels around a lot working as a trucker, but Dean can get a cheek swab from him soon enough and get the stupid thing shipped off to the lab.
Michael swabs his cheek in the bathroom of the diner, feeling ridiculous even doing it in there.
Dean gives him a ride home, and later on, Michael only remembers an exchange of phone numbers and some hasty goodbyes. And then Dean holds out his hand and Michael takes it and he just knows.
A few weeks later, Michael comes back to the apartment to find the DNA results in the mail among the bills and junk mail.
He doesn't bother opening the envelope. After all, why even bother?
********
Six months into the road trip
"I swear to God, I'm buying you a copy of Harry Potter."
Frowning, I pause in flipping through Dad's journal to glance over at Dean as he cleans one of his favorite guns on the motel room's table. "Why do you say that?"
"Sam, you've been over and over that thing about a million time already, you know that? You read it anymore, and it's going to get stuck to your forehead permanently. I'll have to pry it off with a crowbar or something."
I can't help but squirm a little at that. Dean's got a point, I have to admit, but I can't help myself. "I just have to ..." I try to think of what the hell I'm heading for, but give up and add, "I just have to."
Dean stops what he's doing to give me a concerned look. "We'll find him, Sammy."
I force a smile at that, but all I want to do is shake my head in denial.
********
Mid-August
This one week when Jess has gone home to visit her family and he's got to stay behind for his summer internship, Dean shows up at Michael's front door at two in the morning with a nasty gash across his back and a forced smile. "Hey, little brother," he says. "Mind if I bunk here for the night?"
Michael spots the injury almost immediately, Dean's leather jacket pulling up to reveal the bloodstained back of his T-shirt. "What happened to you?"
Dean looks at him as if he's making a big deal over nothing. "Cut myself shaving," he says as he ducks past to go into the apartment. "Why do you ask?"
Michael wonders that himself. It's not like Dean ever bothers giving him a straight answer when he does ask.
Not long after that, Dean reluctantly lets Michael clean the wound, drinking a beer while flipping through one of Michael's law textbooks with a bored expression on his face. "Dude, you ever been on the Winchester House tour?"
Michael grimaces but says nothing. He went there with some friends the first year he'd been at Stanford, the five of them heading over on Halloween for the flashlight tour. He'd come out of the experience with a fractured rib, a black eye, a deep cut across his scalp, and the need for four new friends who wouldn't constantly be asking him what the hell happened to them that night.
Dean takes his silence as a denial and makes a face of his own. "Well, don't," he says, and lifts his arm to give the wound a dirty look. "It sucks."
********
Seven months into the road trip
"So how many lucky numbers this time, Sammy?"
I shake my head and smile as I glance over at him from the passenger seat of the Impala, holding up the scratch-off lottery tickets. "Two thousand dollars worth."
Dean's eyes widen at that. "Seriously?" When I nod, he flashes me that cock-eyed grin and snatches the tickets from my hand, laughing softly as he adds them to the small pile of scratch-offs he bought and looks them over. "Hell, mine are all losers. Dude, you have got to get work at a carnival guessing weights or something, because this is unreal."
Being around Dean makes it easier to pull this sort of stuff, the kind of thing I never would have pulled before all of this. It still doesn't feel right, mostly because asking a mini-mart clerk to go through half a roll of lottery tickets for one with a large jackpot gets you a dirty look, and that's if you're lucky. "Beats hustling pool and credit card scams," I point out.
"You just keep telling yourself that," he says.
"Hey, it's weird, but at least it's legit."
"Aw, where's the fun in that?"
Rolling my eyes, I reach over to grab the lottery tickets from his hand. "Here, give me those. I'll take one of the two hundred dollar ones and cash it inside."
Dean smoothly dodges my hand and slides out of the car as if he's been practicing that move forever. "No, man, don't worry about it. I'll take care of this one," he says, giving me that serious protective-big-brother look before heading back into the store.
The things we don't tell one another fall around us like anvils raining from the sky. Two of his tickets are winners, and they weren't when I looked them over back in the store, not until Dean bought them after me and scratched them off himself just to be contrary. Tomorrow there'll be an extra five hundred in our stash, and I'm not supposed to mention it.
Of course, that makes it sound like I want to.
********
Early November
Michael comes home from class one day to find Jess and Dean in the living room, nursing a couple of beers and laughing over stories about him. Dean's mind is working overtime as Michael walks in, and he's pretty sure Dean's been making most of his stories up. Not like he's had much of a choice, but still.
"So I finally get to meet the elusive brother," Jess says, handing him a bottle of beer.
"Well, I'm not in the area much," Dean says with a shrug. He gives her his most charming smile and settles back on the couch.
Michael hopes Jess doesn't notice Dean wince, but he's good about covering it up.
They talk for a good hour or so before Michael manages to direct the conversation in just the right way for Jess to suggest the two boys go out to a bar by themselves. "Go on, have yourselves a boys's night out, you two" are her exact words, and Michael kisses her goodbye and steers Dean out the front door before he tries to hit on her again.
They're halfway to the bar before Michael practically shoves Dean into the first alley they come to and waves his hand at Dean's midsection. "Okay, let's see it," he says.
Dean puts on his most innocent expression. "What?"
"Whatever the hell you did to yourself this time. Come on."
Dean frowns. "Dude, it's nothing, all right?" he says, but he's tugging up the bottom of his T-shirt as he says it, and Michael sucks in a breath as the mottled bruising on Dean's midsection reveals itself. It probably looks disastrous in a place with more light, but then again it doesn't look all that great in a place without much light, either, the bruising making it look as if someone slammed a large and heavy piece of furniture into him.
Michael barely restrains the argument he can feel churning inside him. "What happened?"
Tugging the shirt back down again, Dean plasters on his most charming smile. "Car accident. Nothing major."
Michael doesn't believe him, but he didn't much believe him the last time. He takes a deep breath and lets his mind open up, grasping for the truth from behind Dean's suave attempts to smooth things over and finding nothing he can hold onto. If these last few months have taught Michael anything, it's that things are harder with Dean than they are with most other people, as if the skeleton key he has to other people's thoughts and energies doesn't always work in the lock in Dean's brain.
He lets it slide, though. Even if he has yet to meet his father, he's got a family now, or something vaguely resembling one, and the desperate urge to never let it go will let Michael forgive a lot.
They spend a few hours at Michael's favorite bar, Michael buying the rounds until Dean goes off to play a round of pool with some dense frat boy and comes back with a wad of twenties. Michael just shakes his head and laughs, and Dean punches him playfully and passes him another shot. Michael gets far enough past buzzed to stop counting the number of women who pass by them and mentally picture snatching Dean up and dragging him to the nearest bed, pretty sure Dean doesn't need the ego inflation. They both drink and crack jokes and talk about the least important things on the planet, and Michael keeps wondering if they would have been like this if he hadn't been taken.
He gets a fleeting glimpse in his mind of the thing without a face (and that's not even the worst part) and knocks back another shot in retaliation.
Dean spends the entire night debating whether or not to tell Michael something, an internal conflict Michael would have known even if he weren't psychic. He waits and watches and waits and watches, and he's still waiting later on when Dean walks him back to the apartment building and tells him he'll see him again the next time he comes through town.
Michael goes upstairs in a pleasant daze, dodging everyone else's grasping thoughts and emotions like a red-carpet celebrity ducking around the grabbing hands of his excited fans. He enters the apartment to find all of the lights off and the shower running, and wanders into the bedroom to collapse onto his back on the bed.
One drop on his forehead, and he flinches.
Two drops, and he opens his eyes.
Jesus, it's the woman in my nightmare, he thinks, and it's a quick terrifying second before he realizes that it's not her.
Jess stares down at him from the ceiling, eyes glazed over, a horrified expression on her face, and fresh blood staining the front of her white nightgown.
"No," he hears himself yell, just before the fire spreads from her poor broken body.
A hundred miles away, Dean kicks open the bedroom door, but Michael doesn't see him. The thoughts in Michael's head smother beneath the overwhelming sensations of heat and smoke and the look on Jess's face, and Dean's dragging him towards the door as he yells Jess's name, and the only point when he realizes Dean is there is when he thinks in a daze that there was no real reason for Dean to come charging upstairs to his apartment like this.
*he just came, just like that, he just came, why did he come*
That's when the fireball engulfs the ceiling, and Michael isn't thinking much of anything that's remotely clear after that.
********
Eight months into the road trip
I've been thinking a lot about it lately, ever since we left Kansas and the normal rush of prophetic dreams through my head was replaced with a thousand different reasons for that quiet apology from our mother. The simplest explanation is always the best, common sense tells me, but if that were always the case, neither one of us would have a job. Or what passed for one if you overlooked the absence of a paycheck, at any rate.
We're in Alabama eating hamburgers at some roadside stand when I ask, "What if it came for both of us?"
Dean stops dipping his fries in ketchup as a confused look crosses his face. "I think I would have remembered it coming after me, Sammy," Dean says, his lips tugging upward in a teasing smile.
I work over the theory in my brain, trying to wrap it into something cohesive and whole, and I say, "It took me when I was a baby, Dean. What if it went to see you when you were a baby without anyone finding out? Maybe when it came for me, it got caught and panicked."
Dean's eyes narrow. "Got caught doing what?"
My brow furrows as I look down at my sandwich and say, "I don't know."
When I look back up at Dean again, he's gone back to eating his hamburger as if nothing has happened. But behind him, the flag flying in the parking lot of the burger place whips almost angrily in the air as if trying to escape from the flagpost, even though the paper wrappers on our table sit eerily still from the lack of a breeze.
Times like this, I think he doesn't notice on purpose.
********
Early November
The smoke stopped pouring from the windows of the apartment a while ago, but the sting of it still hangs in the air. Neighbors and passersby mull around and watch the firemen tramp in and out of the building, only once carrying something morbid enough to peak their interest. The entire time, people wrinkle their nose at the faint smell of burnt meat, most of them not realizing what they're doing until the body bag is carried out.
No one takes notice of the tall, dark-haired young man with the haunted eyes sitting on the curb, but it's only fair. He's long past seeing any of them for the rest of the night.
*I should have known should have known should have known should have known*
"Michael?"
He looks up to see Dean standing over him, concern in his gaze as he clenches his fists at his side. In his head, Dean's thinking of going out and throttling someone in his name -- a bully, a pushy teacher, an arsonist with creativity -- and it amazes him how easy it would be for him to go ahead and let Dean do it.
He closes his eyes to the world for one long moment, taking a deep shuddering breath he can feel all the way to his toes. A minute later, something dark and sinister, a thought both vengeful and calculating, flickers through his brain like a carefully aimed thread of fire.
He can't tell whether it's Dean's thought or his, but at this point, he doesn't think it matters.
"Give me your keys," he says to Dean.
Dean almost flinches at that, as if he expects Michael to get into the Impala and drive it right off a very steep cliff. He stares at Michael for the longest time, until the sharp wail of a dying police siren passes behind him as the car drives past on its way to the apartment building.
A moment later, the cool light weight of the keys presses into Michael's palm.
He's on his feet in a shot, heading towards the Impala with single-minded purpose. Dean trails after him with a quick glance at the uncaring crowd, probably presuming Michael's first stop to be the driver's seat of the Impala.
It isn't.
Michael lets himself do what Dean wants to do, what the suppressed but usually dominant voice in his mind has been telling him to do since he pulled Michael from the apartment. He passes the driver's side door without so much as a cursory glance, heading straight for the trunk.
He could swear he hears Dean behind him saying his name, and Michael expects a loud protest to follow the way Dean suddenly hurries to catch up.
Michael doesn't hear. He doesn't even care.
He just strides around the car, unlocks the trunk just like Dean wants to do, flips it open and --
Nothing. The trunk is empty.
A quick glance over at Dean reveals that familiar poker face, as if he's waiting for Michael's next move before he bothers to react. But every muscle in his body is tense, and his train of thought is mostly just a jumble of nervous thoughts. He doesn't know how Michael knew to open the trunk. He isn't sure that he wants Michael to know what's in the trunk. He's seriously considering slamming the trunk shut, grabbing the keys from Michael's hand, getting into the car, and never coming back, all of it in an attempt to protect Michael.
Michael won't let that happen. He can't let that happen.
He knows he can't.
Steeling himself, he reaches out and lifts up the cover for the spare tire compartment.
At his side, Dean hisses in his breath as the foreign thoughts in Michael's mind cut off. He calmly reaches out and props the compartment open with one of the guns, Dean's eyes widening slightly as he does so. Michael barely sees him, though, taking in the contents of the compartment. Lots of guns of every shape and size, and enough ammo to invade Baghdad, from the looks of it. Bladed weapons for any occasion -- a hunting knife, a tomahawk, a few strangely shaped blades here and there. Trinkets and amulets, herbs in baggies and cloth sacks and detailed drawings of creatures tacked up to the interior of the compartment's cover like Wanted posters. Vials of water Michael can only presume have been blessed are tucked beside wooden crosses and one or two dog-eared copies of books on the occult.
"Michael ..." Dean's voice trails off for the briefest of instances, as if he's desperately trying to come up with a cover story within seconds, and Michael is positive this is the first time he's ever been speechless. He flashes Michael an oddly apologetic look, like he's sorry he dragged Michael into this mess, like he never wanted Michael to see or be involved in any of this.
Michael picks up a sawed-off shotgun and tests the weight of it in his hand, thinking clearly about what it might be like to blow away a face that's not there (and that's not even the worse part).
Giving Dean a hard look, Michael drops the shotgun back into the trunk.
"Call me Sam," he says, and slams the trunk shut.
********
One year into the road trip
I read this poem once about a guy dying in wartime, a really short five-line verse I can't even remember well anymore. The only line I remember is 'I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters', and the only reason is because it keeps popping up in my head at the weirdest times. When we're both lying on the ground catching our breath after fighting to burn the bones of a destructive specter. When I slump into the nearest chair with the journal open to the words to an exorcism while Dean checks on the unconscious and demon-free victim. When we're lying in our beds in some dingy motel room, neither of us asleep.
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. If my life were a picture, I think, that would be the caption.
My name is Samuel James Winchester, or at least it says so on at least one of my IDs. It also says I'm an FBI agent with high clearance, but I try to overlook that.
None of my IDs have the name Michael Ryan on them. Most of the time, I can't bring myself to care.
I wish I do more often, usually about five minutes before I'm reminded again why I don't. Inevitably, it's Dean with a bullet graze or a black eye or a huge contusion on his back that's going to make driving the Impala an impossibly painful feat. I could worry like crazy about the whole thing, but there's only so much warning I get most of the time from whatever satellite broadcasts the nightmares into my skull. It hardly ever warns me about Dean getting injured. I'm starting to think it wants me to suffer.
Most of the time, I feel like I'm a puzzle piece who made a wrong turn somewhere right into the empty spot I was supposed to fill, and it sounds right and doesn't sound right all at once.
A road trip with Dean is like a test in patience given in the mosh pit at a Metallica concert. His taste in music tends towards anything that sounds cool and sexy to someone standing on a street corner as the Impala drives past at ninety miles an hour. Most of his food isn't actually food, yet for all of the crap he eats while driving, he never gains weight and God forbid anyone get Cheetos on the car's interior. All of the pens that enter the Impala leave with their ends chewed as if rats have gotten to them.
He'll always be a better shot than I am, but at least he admits I can handle a gun now.
I'm better with bow hunting, it turns out, something that drives Dean crazy. I try to think that it would have been like this if I hadn't been taken, the two of us hunting evil together our entire lives, me skipping out on the college thing to be some armed vigilante with my lunatic of an older brother. I wonder if I would have felt as at home doing it in that case as I do now, carrying a weapon at Dean's side as we go after that poltergeist or into that abandoned building.
I think I would. I think I'd know this is where I belong.
But I also think I'm kidding myself.
I know we'll find Jessica's killer one day. I know we will, the same way I know which lottery tickets to pick and when to drop to the ground when Dean calls my name. And after that, I don't know what happens, and it scares the hell out of me. Thirteen years of my life are already gone, and I'm not about to lose any more.
Dad is still missing, and Dean talks about him like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We fight enough evil things, kill enough creatures in the darkness, and we'll see him. We'll turn a corner one day and there he'll be, leaning against something and asking where the hell we've been. And then he'll hug me and hug Dean and we'll be one big ghostbusting family again.
Dean puts a picture of him on the passenger side visor, as if he wants me to stare at it and stare and stare until the face of John Winchester is burned into my brain.
But I know damn well who he is.
He's sitting right behind me.
In the back seat of the car as we cross the country in search of something evil to kill. In the empty chair of the last motel room we shared as we fought a demon specifically killing little girls. At the counter of the diner where we ate lunch at the last exit.
He's blatant the way he watches us, as if he doesn't even notice the way my gaze keeps drifting over to him. I can't help it.
"You know we're going to find Dad," Dean says as he eats scrambled eggs at a mom-and-pop restaurant one day.
I've given up quietly suggesting he might not even be alive. The reaction from Dean is never pretty. "I know," I say and try desperately not to scowl in the direction of the next table as a familiar face watches us eat.
A ghost can haunt a person, and he's damn well haunting us.
Someday we'll find his body, probably right around the time we find whatever killed Jessica and Mom and took me away from my family. When we find him, I'm going to try to keep Dean from seeing it. And if I have to salt and burn the bones to make him go away, I will, no matter how much I'll hate it.
Dean spends all of his time trying to protect me. I've barely had a chance to try and protect him back.
After all, missing is better than dead any day. I should know.
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for language)
Pairing: Nothing, really, unless you count the occasional Sam/Jess reference
Warning: Death and violence, but not much.
Disclaimer: Supernatural and all associated characters are not mine. I'm just playing with them, because making my Hurley and Jerry Garcia dolls do this stuff is not half as much fun.
Summary: What if Mary's death hadn't been the only tragedy that night?
Author's note: AU from the flashback to that night. I just found myself wondering what would have happened if that night had ended a little differently, so now there is fic. :)
Three months into the road trip
"Dean?"
Dean doesn't tear his gaze away from the fast food joints and cheap motels lining the road when he says, "Yeah, Sammy?"
I'm still in that hazy fog between being asleep and being awake, or else I wouldn't ask. But my brain can't stop my mouth from blurting out, "You didn't see her die."
The Impala almost quivers in response, even though Dean doesn't flinch and the car's steering wheel remains still under Dean's one-handed grasp. His knuckles grow white as his fingers tighten on the wheel, and later on, when he's still not speaking to me, I'll wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
"Don't start this again," he says.
But I keep going, because I'm an idiot, or I'm insane, or I'm still wandering around the goddamn dream I just had. "You were still out in the hallway when Dad sent you outside," I hear myself say. "I mean, you did see her die, just not with your eyes." I turn to look at him with eyes still clouded with sleep and say, "Didn't you?"
The dreams don't lie. This I've learned from experience. But Dean says nothing in response, putting both of his hands on the steering wheel and clenching until I'm positive I'm about to hear bones crack.
A minute later, the wail of Quiet Riot grows noticably louder as the radio's volume turns up without anyone touching it.
We both try to pretend it's simply a quirk of the Impala. We've got a lot of practice at that by now.
********
Early June
The guy who broke into his apartment last month has come back to steal a beer.
Michael Ryan's eyes crack open as his dreams fade away like the pounding music from a departing car. His mind brims with meandering thoughts not his own --
*be real cool about the whole thing, crack open a window, slip right in, and a beer or two, maybe even some chips*
-- and Michael can't help but wonder if it's possible for the thief in the car outside his apartment building to broadcast his thoughts any louder. Maybe with a megaphone or a set of massive speakers or something. Hell, he's amazed he's the only one awake during all of this.
His mind fills with images of the man who broke in weeks ago returning to finish what he started, of the inept thief who'd only rifled through his drawers before taking his comb and his goddamn toothbrush. Michael tried to figure out for days what the hell that was all about -- his guess had been a really lame scavenger hunt, while his girlfriend's guess had been someone with a used hygiene product fetish, which had both grossed them out and killed them with laughter -- and now the jerk is back for more.
He would laugh, if he weren't about to put up with the annoyance of getting the locks replaced again.
Michael gets out of bed riding high on someone else's adrenaline, then grabs his sneakers and jeans and heads into the bathroom to change. His girlfriend barely moves in the bed as he pads barefoot into the next room, but then again, she'll sleep through anything that's not her alarm clock. College does that to you, turning some free weekends into marathons to see just how long you can sleep in one blissfully neverending stretch, and she's spent the last two weekend writing papers and studying for finals. She's earned the extra sleep, he thinks, tugging his jeans on over his boxers.
He makes it through the apartment building without latching onto anyone else's thoughts, a minor miracle in a complex filled with either anxious students pulling all-nighters before the last midterms or weekend partiers just passed out in their beds. Michael debates whether or not to try and sneak around to the back door, maybe catch the bastard by surprise, but he's still catching that nervous internal monologue --
*if he has cable, because if he has cable, maybe we can watch a game or something, except it's the middle of the night, and what the hell do college students watch on television anyway*
-- and after careful consideration, Michael figures there's no way he's going to pull off a sneak attack and just heads right out the front door.
Even with the guy letting his train of thought steam right through Michael's brain like goddamn Amtrak, it still takes Michael a minute to spot the car, parked as it is in the pitch black darkness of a spot far from the street lights. An overhanging tree's dangling branches make it that much more difficult, but narrowed eyes and a little concentration leads Michael's gaze to the car, and ultimately to the driver's faintly stunned expression.
He hides it well, though, a cold poker face shielding anything remotely resembling fear. To his credit, he doesn't drive off as Michael approaches, although from the look in his eyes, he's sorely tempted to.
His window is rolled down, and Michael leans down as soon as he gets to the car and sighs. "You suck at this whole burglary thing, you know that?"
The guy in the driver's seat frowns. There's a split second where Michael wonders if he's got the right guy, but he's never been wrong about this sort of thing before. Why start now? "Come again?"
"Two computers, a television, and my DVD collection, and you took my comb and a toothbrush?"
Michael looks in at the guy, feeling almost playful about the whole thing by now, and he finally flashes Michael a disarming yet vaguely guilty smile. From the look on his face, Michael bets that he finds himself in situations like this a lot, and gets in about as much trouble those times as he's getting in now. "Yeah, sorry about that," he says. "I couldn't think of any other way to --"
He chokes on his words suddenly, and Michael blurts out, "Any other way to what?"
The guy in the car says nothing, studiously avoiding his gaze as he runs his hands along the steering wheel in a motion that makes it look as if doing so calls him down.
Scowling, Michael says, "Look, either you tell me who the hell you are, or I'm calling the cops."
The thief looks up at him at that, a muscle in his clenched jaw flickering as he levels his gaze up at Michael and takes a deep breath.
"My name is Dean Winchester," he says, "and I think you might be my brother Sam."
********
Five months into the road trip
"Sam!"
Dean yells my name, the command silent but clear, and I drop to the floor of the school gym just in time for him to fire the shotgun at the ghost standing over me with the axe, a barrage of rock salt sending him off somewhere else for now. The two of us sit there for a long silent moment trying to catch our breath, Dean glancing around the room.
"Where did she go?" he asks.
I shrug, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. "Back home, I guess." The girl we've been trying to protect, Amanda Jenkins, isn't like most of the people we fight the darkness for. We've spent a week in this town investigating the axe-wielding spirit stalking her and her family, and this is the third time she's gotten one look at the evil chasing her and taken off running for home. So many of the people we save freeze up at the sight of whatever creature haunts them, and it's nice for once to protect someone who has enough common sense to run away.
Dean and I never run. I'm starting to think we're really stupid.
Dean holds out his arm to pull me to my feet, and as soon as I grab onto his arm, something flashes through my mind, sharp and quick.
A scream. Amanda's scream, coming from about two hundred feet to the east.
But only in my head.
"We have to go," I say, letting him pull me up and stalking towards the double doors leading outside.
Dean doesn't even bother asking why anymore. He simply grabs his bag and follows after me.
I may be taking back that compliment about her bolting away from danger at the first sign of it. I'll get back to you on that.
********
Early June, later that first night
Michael takes Dean to this diner he goes to sometimes when he wants to study but doesn't want as much background noise as the apartment complex tends to have. The diner sits on a street corner far away from any other buildings, stays open twenty-four hours a day, and usually only has three or four people in it late at night. The handful of memories and voices in his mind when he's here feel practically like white noise, and Michael's gotten to the point where even when it's busy, his mind reverts to the happy static of psychic low gear, if there even is such a thing.
When they arrive, the place isn't packed but it isn't empty, either, and as anxious as the two of them are around one another, it's better than going back to the apartment. Going up to his place would mean Michael having to wake up Jessica and explain the whole confusing situation. Hell, he's still glossing over the reasons he won't play poker with his friends anymore even though she knows he plays like a professional.
It sounds like a stupid idea at first, going anywhere with someone who broke into his apartment and had planned on doing it again, but the thoughts he gleans from Dean's cluttered stream of consciousness are almost too harmless.
They order something -- Michael isn't even paying attention to what, but it sounds like Dean just pick at random off the menu -- and Dean follows that up by reaching into his knapsack and removing a worn, thick leather journal. The covers bulge and the seams are ripped in spots, and when Dean drops it unceremoniously on the table of the booth, it makes a pretty solid thump.
Michael glances up at him for a long moment --
*kid should just read the damn thing, enough information in there to back me up, it's got to be Sam, it's just got to be*
-- then sighs and cracks open the journal.
Newspaper articles and notes on missing children line the pages of the journal, the small neat handwriting crammed together so tightly it looks as if three pages of information has been forced onto the front of one small piece of notebook paper. Photos attached neatly to each page show off a good-looking young family -- a dark-haired man, a beautiful blond woman, a little boy with dark blond hair and a chubby-cheeked baby.
A baby who's supposed to be him.
Michael's eyes narrow as he removes a folded sheet of paper from the journal and opens it, hitching in a breath as soon as he sees the face staring back at him. The picture isn't an exact likeness, that's for sure. He looks vaguely puffy around the edges and his complexion is flat and dull, as if someone painted his face from a detailed description but used a color-by-numbers paint set to do it.
But that's what age progression always looks like, Michael thinks in a stunned sort of way, and he puts the paper face-down on the table as their food arrives.
"This is a joke, right?"
Dean has already taken a sip of his soda, the only thing he could order when he discovered beer wasn't on the menu, and has to swallow it before he can answer. "I wouldn't joke about this," he says.
Yeah, Michael's sure of that -- this is a pretty shitty thing to joke with anyone about -- and when he realizes how that must have sounded, he frowns and says, "Sorry."
Dean's brow furrows as he douses one of his french fries in ketchup, but he doesn't eat it and Michael gets the impression he's ordered the food more to keep his hands occupied than to actually end up anywhere near his mouth. "You telling me it's not possible?"
"I never said that," Michael blurts out. The truth is, it's very possible. The hell if he knows where he came from. His early years are a haze, and the only memory he has from before he was found is of a man ... no, that's being really fucking polite about it. It's of a thing, of a creature with a black hole where his face should be, and Michael's brain always feels the need to add that that empty, dark space isn't even the worst part. The thing looks down at him, always looks down at him, and when he dreams of the damn thing, he always wakes up screaming.
Everything else in his nightmares he's learned to handle, but that ... that's something no one should have to handle.
Shaking the image from his head with a shudder, Michael asks, "How did you find me?"
Dean looks up from the hamburger he's been removing the pickles from, and it's a second too long before he finally answer. "Private investigator," he says, and the word psychic darts through Michael's mind so fast he's sure he missed it. "We've been looking for you ever since the night we lost you."
"We?"
"Me and Dad."
Michael's struck by that, suddenly realizing that he never actually thought of that. He'd occasionally thought of a mother but he'd never actually thought of a dad. He feels like something has stuck in his throat and manages to say in a teasing sort of way, "What, no Mom?"
It's the wrong thing to say, and Michael figures that out almost instantly, even before Dean's expression grows cold and almost empty. He levels his gaze at Michael and says, "She was murdered the night you were taken. By the same son of a bitch who took you."
There's a thousand thoughts on the tip of Michael's tongue -- an apology, a wish he could have met her, a question about what the hell happened to the monster who'd killed his mother and stolen him -- but instead he catches himself focusing on the way Dean keeps talking to him. Like he already knows for a fact that Michael is really his little brother. Like there isn't a question in his mind.
"You can't even be sure it's me," he says, and he wonders if it sounds to Dean like he's whining, because it sure as hell sounds that way to him.
The look on Dean's face softens somewhat, and he looks more sincere than he has all night long for one brief moment. "Not yet," he says, "but I'm getting there."
He reaches into his bag again, and the next thing Michael knows, Dean's shoved a plastic bag into his grasp. Frowning, Michael opens the bag and peers inside. He cocks an eyebrow when he glances over at Dean. "A DNA test?"
"The things you can get off the Internet," Dean says with a smile. "I tried it with the comb and the toothbrush, but it didn't pan out. So, I come to you."
"Don't you mean I come to you before you break into my apartment again?"
"Okay, so maybe you've got a point," he says, and the playfulness in his expression fades the longer he stares across the table at Michael. And just when Michael doesn't think he can feel any more self-conscious, Dean says in this pained sort of voice, "Jesus, where the hell have you been, Sammy?"
There's no urge he has to fight to correct Dean when he calls him Sammy and he's a little grateful for that for Dean's sake. But the mention of where he's been makes it hard for him to speak when he finally says, "I don't know." Michael closes his eyes before continuing, as if desperately trying to grasp for memories in a dark, secret place where there are none to grab for no matter how much he wishes for them. "I can't remember my childhood. They found me lying unconscious in a field in California about nine years ago. I didn't even know who I was."
Yeah, abandoned in a field. Some birth, Michael thinks, in the same sort of sarcastic tone his thoughts always slip into when he starts thinking about his missing years. The years that are a blank fog in his mind, where he can't figure out who had him or what they did to him or what they ... you know, did to him. He wonders sometimes what the hell he is when he hear voices and sense emotions, when he dreams of dark men with no face and a woman he can't see floating over him as she bursts into flames.
He's half tempted to ask Dean how their mother was murdered but can't find the words.
It takes a moment for Michael to realize that Dean's slightly stricken expression isn't for his whole story, but simply for the bit about how long he was gone. "What was the date?"
"What?"
"The date," Dean says. He's long ago abandoned the food, and his hands press down hard on the edge of the table. "What day did they find you?"
Michael frowns. "November 2, 1996. What does that have to do with anything?"
Dean goes cold and frozen and distant for a long, harsh minute --
*november second, thirteen years, november second, thirteen years*
-- and Michael's almost afraid he's going to pass out, the way his eyes go just wide enough for concern. But he finally recovers whatever cool he's lost, and he grins. "No reason," he says, then leans back in his chair. "So, Sammy --"
"Michael."
"Mike, then."
"Michael."
Dean waves his hand distractedly towards the far side of the diner. "Sorry, can't hear you over the TV."
Skeptically, Michael glances over at the TV on the other side of the diner, the volume loud enough for that section of the dining room but hard to hear from where they're sitting. If this is what having an older brother is like, Michael is going to have to add grinding his teeth to his bad late-night habits.
They're there for another hour and a half, discussing the kind of awkward small talk you have to get out of the way in a situation like that. Michael plans to go to law school and gets perfect grades. Dean works as a mechanic, or at least he says he does. Michael has Jessica. Dean has his beloved Impala, and waxes rhapsodic about the damn thing for ten straight minutes before Michael makes a crack about the two of them getting a room. And Dad travels around a lot working as a trucker, but Dean can get a cheek swab from him soon enough and get the stupid thing shipped off to the lab.
Michael swabs his cheek in the bathroom of the diner, feeling ridiculous even doing it in there.
Dean gives him a ride home, and later on, Michael only remembers an exchange of phone numbers and some hasty goodbyes. And then Dean holds out his hand and Michael takes it and he just knows.
A few weeks later, Michael comes back to the apartment to find the DNA results in the mail among the bills and junk mail.
He doesn't bother opening the envelope. After all, why even bother?
********
Six months into the road trip
"I swear to God, I'm buying you a copy of Harry Potter."
Frowning, I pause in flipping through Dad's journal to glance over at Dean as he cleans one of his favorite guns on the motel room's table. "Why do you say that?"
"Sam, you've been over and over that thing about a million time already, you know that? You read it anymore, and it's going to get stuck to your forehead permanently. I'll have to pry it off with a crowbar or something."
I can't help but squirm a little at that. Dean's got a point, I have to admit, but I can't help myself. "I just have to ..." I try to think of what the hell I'm heading for, but give up and add, "I just have to."
Dean stops what he's doing to give me a concerned look. "We'll find him, Sammy."
I force a smile at that, but all I want to do is shake my head in denial.
********
Mid-August
This one week when Jess has gone home to visit her family and he's got to stay behind for his summer internship, Dean shows up at Michael's front door at two in the morning with a nasty gash across his back and a forced smile. "Hey, little brother," he says. "Mind if I bunk here for the night?"
Michael spots the injury almost immediately, Dean's leather jacket pulling up to reveal the bloodstained back of his T-shirt. "What happened to you?"
Dean looks at him as if he's making a big deal over nothing. "Cut myself shaving," he says as he ducks past to go into the apartment. "Why do you ask?"
Michael wonders that himself. It's not like Dean ever bothers giving him a straight answer when he does ask.
Not long after that, Dean reluctantly lets Michael clean the wound, drinking a beer while flipping through one of Michael's law textbooks with a bored expression on his face. "Dude, you ever been on the Winchester House tour?"
Michael grimaces but says nothing. He went there with some friends the first year he'd been at Stanford, the five of them heading over on Halloween for the flashlight tour. He'd come out of the experience with a fractured rib, a black eye, a deep cut across his scalp, and the need for four new friends who wouldn't constantly be asking him what the hell happened to them that night.
Dean takes his silence as a denial and makes a face of his own. "Well, don't," he says, and lifts his arm to give the wound a dirty look. "It sucks."
********
Seven months into the road trip
"So how many lucky numbers this time, Sammy?"
I shake my head and smile as I glance over at him from the passenger seat of the Impala, holding up the scratch-off lottery tickets. "Two thousand dollars worth."
Dean's eyes widen at that. "Seriously?" When I nod, he flashes me that cock-eyed grin and snatches the tickets from my hand, laughing softly as he adds them to the small pile of scratch-offs he bought and looks them over. "Hell, mine are all losers. Dude, you have got to get work at a carnival guessing weights or something, because this is unreal."
Being around Dean makes it easier to pull this sort of stuff, the kind of thing I never would have pulled before all of this. It still doesn't feel right, mostly because asking a mini-mart clerk to go through half a roll of lottery tickets for one with a large jackpot gets you a dirty look, and that's if you're lucky. "Beats hustling pool and credit card scams," I point out.
"You just keep telling yourself that," he says.
"Hey, it's weird, but at least it's legit."
"Aw, where's the fun in that?"
Rolling my eyes, I reach over to grab the lottery tickets from his hand. "Here, give me those. I'll take one of the two hundred dollar ones and cash it inside."
Dean smoothly dodges my hand and slides out of the car as if he's been practicing that move forever. "No, man, don't worry about it. I'll take care of this one," he says, giving me that serious protective-big-brother look before heading back into the store.
The things we don't tell one another fall around us like anvils raining from the sky. Two of his tickets are winners, and they weren't when I looked them over back in the store, not until Dean bought them after me and scratched them off himself just to be contrary. Tomorrow there'll be an extra five hundred in our stash, and I'm not supposed to mention it.
Of course, that makes it sound like I want to.
********
Early November
Michael comes home from class one day to find Jess and Dean in the living room, nursing a couple of beers and laughing over stories about him. Dean's mind is working overtime as Michael walks in, and he's pretty sure Dean's been making most of his stories up. Not like he's had much of a choice, but still.
"So I finally get to meet the elusive brother," Jess says, handing him a bottle of beer.
"Well, I'm not in the area much," Dean says with a shrug. He gives her his most charming smile and settles back on the couch.
Michael hopes Jess doesn't notice Dean wince, but he's good about covering it up.
They talk for a good hour or so before Michael manages to direct the conversation in just the right way for Jess to suggest the two boys go out to a bar by themselves. "Go on, have yourselves a boys's night out, you two" are her exact words, and Michael kisses her goodbye and steers Dean out the front door before he tries to hit on her again.
They're halfway to the bar before Michael practically shoves Dean into the first alley they come to and waves his hand at Dean's midsection. "Okay, let's see it," he says.
Dean puts on his most innocent expression. "What?"
"Whatever the hell you did to yourself this time. Come on."
Dean frowns. "Dude, it's nothing, all right?" he says, but he's tugging up the bottom of his T-shirt as he says it, and Michael sucks in a breath as the mottled bruising on Dean's midsection reveals itself. It probably looks disastrous in a place with more light, but then again it doesn't look all that great in a place without much light, either, the bruising making it look as if someone slammed a large and heavy piece of furniture into him.
Michael barely restrains the argument he can feel churning inside him. "What happened?"
Tugging the shirt back down again, Dean plasters on his most charming smile. "Car accident. Nothing major."
Michael doesn't believe him, but he didn't much believe him the last time. He takes a deep breath and lets his mind open up, grasping for the truth from behind Dean's suave attempts to smooth things over and finding nothing he can hold onto. If these last few months have taught Michael anything, it's that things are harder with Dean than they are with most other people, as if the skeleton key he has to other people's thoughts and energies doesn't always work in the lock in Dean's brain.
He lets it slide, though. Even if he has yet to meet his father, he's got a family now, or something vaguely resembling one, and the desperate urge to never let it go will let Michael forgive a lot.
They spend a few hours at Michael's favorite bar, Michael buying the rounds until Dean goes off to play a round of pool with some dense frat boy and comes back with a wad of twenties. Michael just shakes his head and laughs, and Dean punches him playfully and passes him another shot. Michael gets far enough past buzzed to stop counting the number of women who pass by them and mentally picture snatching Dean up and dragging him to the nearest bed, pretty sure Dean doesn't need the ego inflation. They both drink and crack jokes and talk about the least important things on the planet, and Michael keeps wondering if they would have been like this if he hadn't been taken.
He gets a fleeting glimpse in his mind of the thing without a face (and that's not even the worst part) and knocks back another shot in retaliation.
Dean spends the entire night debating whether or not to tell Michael something, an internal conflict Michael would have known even if he weren't psychic. He waits and watches and waits and watches, and he's still waiting later on when Dean walks him back to the apartment building and tells him he'll see him again the next time he comes through town.
Michael goes upstairs in a pleasant daze, dodging everyone else's grasping thoughts and emotions like a red-carpet celebrity ducking around the grabbing hands of his excited fans. He enters the apartment to find all of the lights off and the shower running, and wanders into the bedroom to collapse onto his back on the bed.
One drop on his forehead, and he flinches.
Two drops, and he opens his eyes.
Jesus, it's the woman in my nightmare, he thinks, and it's a quick terrifying second before he realizes that it's not her.
Jess stares down at him from the ceiling, eyes glazed over, a horrified expression on her face, and fresh blood staining the front of her white nightgown.
"No," he hears himself yell, just before the fire spreads from her poor broken body.
A hundred miles away, Dean kicks open the bedroom door, but Michael doesn't see him. The thoughts in Michael's head smother beneath the overwhelming sensations of heat and smoke and the look on Jess's face, and Dean's dragging him towards the door as he yells Jess's name, and the only point when he realizes Dean is there is when he thinks in a daze that there was no real reason for Dean to come charging upstairs to his apartment like this.
*he just came, just like that, he just came, why did he come*
That's when the fireball engulfs the ceiling, and Michael isn't thinking much of anything that's remotely clear after that.
********
Eight months into the road trip
I've been thinking a lot about it lately, ever since we left Kansas and the normal rush of prophetic dreams through my head was replaced with a thousand different reasons for that quiet apology from our mother. The simplest explanation is always the best, common sense tells me, but if that were always the case, neither one of us would have a job. Or what passed for one if you overlooked the absence of a paycheck, at any rate.
We're in Alabama eating hamburgers at some roadside stand when I ask, "What if it came for both of us?"
Dean stops dipping his fries in ketchup as a confused look crosses his face. "I think I would have remembered it coming after me, Sammy," Dean says, his lips tugging upward in a teasing smile.
I work over the theory in my brain, trying to wrap it into something cohesive and whole, and I say, "It took me when I was a baby, Dean. What if it went to see you when you were a baby without anyone finding out? Maybe when it came for me, it got caught and panicked."
Dean's eyes narrow. "Got caught doing what?"
My brow furrows as I look down at my sandwich and say, "I don't know."
When I look back up at Dean again, he's gone back to eating his hamburger as if nothing has happened. But behind him, the flag flying in the parking lot of the burger place whips almost angrily in the air as if trying to escape from the flagpost, even though the paper wrappers on our table sit eerily still from the lack of a breeze.
Times like this, I think he doesn't notice on purpose.
********
Early November
The smoke stopped pouring from the windows of the apartment a while ago, but the sting of it still hangs in the air. Neighbors and passersby mull around and watch the firemen tramp in and out of the building, only once carrying something morbid enough to peak their interest. The entire time, people wrinkle their nose at the faint smell of burnt meat, most of them not realizing what they're doing until the body bag is carried out.
No one takes notice of the tall, dark-haired young man with the haunted eyes sitting on the curb, but it's only fair. He's long past seeing any of them for the rest of the night.
*I should have known should have known should have known should have known*
"Michael?"
He looks up to see Dean standing over him, concern in his gaze as he clenches his fists at his side. In his head, Dean's thinking of going out and throttling someone in his name -- a bully, a pushy teacher, an arsonist with creativity -- and it amazes him how easy it would be for him to go ahead and let Dean do it.
He closes his eyes to the world for one long moment, taking a deep shuddering breath he can feel all the way to his toes. A minute later, something dark and sinister, a thought both vengeful and calculating, flickers through his brain like a carefully aimed thread of fire.
He can't tell whether it's Dean's thought or his, but at this point, he doesn't think it matters.
"Give me your keys," he says to Dean.
Dean almost flinches at that, as if he expects Michael to get into the Impala and drive it right off a very steep cliff. He stares at Michael for the longest time, until the sharp wail of a dying police siren passes behind him as the car drives past on its way to the apartment building.
A moment later, the cool light weight of the keys presses into Michael's palm.
He's on his feet in a shot, heading towards the Impala with single-minded purpose. Dean trails after him with a quick glance at the uncaring crowd, probably presuming Michael's first stop to be the driver's seat of the Impala.
It isn't.
Michael lets himself do what Dean wants to do, what the suppressed but usually dominant voice in his mind has been telling him to do since he pulled Michael from the apartment. He passes the driver's side door without so much as a cursory glance, heading straight for the trunk.
He could swear he hears Dean behind him saying his name, and Michael expects a loud protest to follow the way Dean suddenly hurries to catch up.
Michael doesn't hear. He doesn't even care.
He just strides around the car, unlocks the trunk just like Dean wants to do, flips it open and --
Nothing. The trunk is empty.
A quick glance over at Dean reveals that familiar poker face, as if he's waiting for Michael's next move before he bothers to react. But every muscle in his body is tense, and his train of thought is mostly just a jumble of nervous thoughts. He doesn't know how Michael knew to open the trunk. He isn't sure that he wants Michael to know what's in the trunk. He's seriously considering slamming the trunk shut, grabbing the keys from Michael's hand, getting into the car, and never coming back, all of it in an attempt to protect Michael.
Michael won't let that happen. He can't let that happen.
He knows he can't.
Steeling himself, he reaches out and lifts up the cover for the spare tire compartment.
At his side, Dean hisses in his breath as the foreign thoughts in Michael's mind cut off. He calmly reaches out and props the compartment open with one of the guns, Dean's eyes widening slightly as he does so. Michael barely sees him, though, taking in the contents of the compartment. Lots of guns of every shape and size, and enough ammo to invade Baghdad, from the looks of it. Bladed weapons for any occasion -- a hunting knife, a tomahawk, a few strangely shaped blades here and there. Trinkets and amulets, herbs in baggies and cloth sacks and detailed drawings of creatures tacked up to the interior of the compartment's cover like Wanted posters. Vials of water Michael can only presume have been blessed are tucked beside wooden crosses and one or two dog-eared copies of books on the occult.
"Michael ..." Dean's voice trails off for the briefest of instances, as if he's desperately trying to come up with a cover story within seconds, and Michael is positive this is the first time he's ever been speechless. He flashes Michael an oddly apologetic look, like he's sorry he dragged Michael into this mess, like he never wanted Michael to see or be involved in any of this.
Michael picks up a sawed-off shotgun and tests the weight of it in his hand, thinking clearly about what it might be like to blow away a face that's not there (and that's not even the worse part).
Giving Dean a hard look, Michael drops the shotgun back into the trunk.
"Call me Sam," he says, and slams the trunk shut.
********
One year into the road trip
I read this poem once about a guy dying in wartime, a really short five-line verse I can't even remember well anymore. The only line I remember is 'I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters', and the only reason is because it keeps popping up in my head at the weirdest times. When we're both lying on the ground catching our breath after fighting to burn the bones of a destructive specter. When I slump into the nearest chair with the journal open to the words to an exorcism while Dean checks on the unconscious and demon-free victim. When we're lying in our beds in some dingy motel room, neither of us asleep.
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. If my life were a picture, I think, that would be the caption.
My name is Samuel James Winchester, or at least it says so on at least one of my IDs. It also says I'm an FBI agent with high clearance, but I try to overlook that.
None of my IDs have the name Michael Ryan on them. Most of the time, I can't bring myself to care.
I wish I do more often, usually about five minutes before I'm reminded again why I don't. Inevitably, it's Dean with a bullet graze or a black eye or a huge contusion on his back that's going to make driving the Impala an impossibly painful feat. I could worry like crazy about the whole thing, but there's only so much warning I get most of the time from whatever satellite broadcasts the nightmares into my skull. It hardly ever warns me about Dean getting injured. I'm starting to think it wants me to suffer.
Most of the time, I feel like I'm a puzzle piece who made a wrong turn somewhere right into the empty spot I was supposed to fill, and it sounds right and doesn't sound right all at once.
A road trip with Dean is like a test in patience given in the mosh pit at a Metallica concert. His taste in music tends towards anything that sounds cool and sexy to someone standing on a street corner as the Impala drives past at ninety miles an hour. Most of his food isn't actually food, yet for all of the crap he eats while driving, he never gains weight and God forbid anyone get Cheetos on the car's interior. All of the pens that enter the Impala leave with their ends chewed as if rats have gotten to them.
He'll always be a better shot than I am, but at least he admits I can handle a gun now.
I'm better with bow hunting, it turns out, something that drives Dean crazy. I try to think that it would have been like this if I hadn't been taken, the two of us hunting evil together our entire lives, me skipping out on the college thing to be some armed vigilante with my lunatic of an older brother. I wonder if I would have felt as at home doing it in that case as I do now, carrying a weapon at Dean's side as we go after that poltergeist or into that abandoned building.
I think I would. I think I'd know this is where I belong.
But I also think I'm kidding myself.
I know we'll find Jessica's killer one day. I know we will, the same way I know which lottery tickets to pick and when to drop to the ground when Dean calls my name. And after that, I don't know what happens, and it scares the hell out of me. Thirteen years of my life are already gone, and I'm not about to lose any more.
Dad is still missing, and Dean talks about him like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We fight enough evil things, kill enough creatures in the darkness, and we'll see him. We'll turn a corner one day and there he'll be, leaning against something and asking where the hell we've been. And then he'll hug me and hug Dean and we'll be one big ghostbusting family again.
Dean puts a picture of him on the passenger side visor, as if he wants me to stare at it and stare and stare until the face of John Winchester is burned into my brain.
But I know damn well who he is.
He's sitting right behind me.
In the back seat of the car as we cross the country in search of something evil to kill. In the empty chair of the last motel room we shared as we fought a demon specifically killing little girls. At the counter of the diner where we ate lunch at the last exit.
He's blatant the way he watches us, as if he doesn't even notice the way my gaze keeps drifting over to him. I can't help it.
"You know we're going to find Dad," Dean says as he eats scrambled eggs at a mom-and-pop restaurant one day.
I've given up quietly suggesting he might not even be alive. The reaction from Dean is never pretty. "I know," I say and try desperately not to scowl in the direction of the next table as a familiar face watches us eat.
A ghost can haunt a person, and he's damn well haunting us.
Someday we'll find his body, probably right around the time we find whatever killed Jessica and Mom and took me away from my family. When we find him, I'm going to try to keep Dean from seeing it. And if I have to salt and burn the bones to make him go away, I will, no matter how much I'll hate it.
Dean spends all of his time trying to protect me. I've barely had a chance to try and protect him back.
After all, missing is better than dead any day. I should know.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:30 am (UTC)And dude, I can safely say as someone who was torn between both, choose Supernatural over this season of TAR. Granted, we're in reruns on Supernatural until January (*whimpers*), but still. Pretty boys fighting the occult beat the obnoxious Weavers every day of the week and twice on Friday the 13th. *eg*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:32 am (UTC)At first I was a little confused from cutting to Dean and 'Michael', then I finally was like 'Ohhhh'. So yes. Very good fic. Yes, Natasha is still green with envy (my fic is the most evil thing ever becuase I can't write but yet all these ideas are coming at me :( ). Can't wait to see more fic :D
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:41 am (UTC)That was phenomenal. Oh man. John was dead all along. And Sam was taken.
All kinds of brilliant, I would never even have imagined a scenario like this. You are incredibly talented.
And I ADORE the way you maintain the bond between the boys even though they've only just found one another.
Bravo dude, brafreakinvo!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 12:57 am (UTC)This is by far the best Supernatural fanfic I have read yet. It's extremely well-written and I adore the changing POVs. It's perfect.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 01:02 am (UTC)Do you plan on writing a sequel? I only ask because the whole universe you've created intrigues me greatly, so I'd like to know if I'll ever get some answers or if I'll have to settle for re-reading this a dozen times. :p
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:28 pm (UTC)Well, I wasn't planning on writing a sequel, but then everybody brought it up and now I'm seriously thinking about it. I am so going to need to do some more planning before I do, though.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:29 pm (UTC)I hadn't been planning a sequel, but now the idea's stuck in my head and I'm thinking about it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:31 pm (UTC)My Sam plotbunnies are eating my brain. That boy and his angst give me way too much fic fodder. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 03:17 am (UTC)And I really like Sam going to the Winchester house without knowing the signficance.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:33 pm (UTC)I couldn't get that mental image of the thing taking Sam out of my head since I saw the pilot. It's just ... dude, it was right there. Over his crib. Looking at him. *cuddles baby!Sam*
And, HEE. They really do have to go to the Winchester House. Honestly, it's a moral imperative, even if it's only in fic. *eg*
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 05:14 am (UTC)Your style is terrific, and the plot (often the harder of the two, in fanfic) is amazing. I'd love to see more...of this one, or something else entirely. I'm addicted!!!
*friends you*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:36 pm (UTC)*friend s back*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 05:51 am (UTC)*flails*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:37 pm (UTC)*lets icon flail with you*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 07:46 pm (UTC)The plot concept itself and the way you executed was great, but I just loved how you took that little difference and ran with it -- bringing Sam's characterization and the tentative interaction between the brothers to its logical conclusion.
I was a little iffy about the first person POV initially, but as the story unraveled the POV style really grew on me since it helped underline the WTF mystery factor and Sam's unsureness about his own identity. Very cool.
Re: Winchester mystery house. Did he go down the stairwell? Dammit, Sam, never go down the stairwell.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 10:38 pm (UTC)His taste in music tends towards anything that sounds cool and sexy to someone standing on a street corner as the Impala drives past at ninety miles an hour.
This is such a good description, and it captures so much about Dean in a nutshell. Lovely story. Thanks for sharing. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 11:07 am (UTC)Second: Love this. Got it recced for several people on my f-list, but I'm slow and just reading this now.
I really belived this AU, and wasn't too confused over the Michael thing :)
I especially like how you tied in the ghost!John in the first section We both try to pretend it's simply a quirk of the Impala. We've got a lot of practice at that by now.
I got to the last part and went "ahaa!"
Anyway, much love nd semi-coherent feedback is the best I can do right now.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:37 pm (UTC)Michael picks up a sawed-off shotgun and tests the weight of it in his hand, thinking clearly about what it might be like to blow away a face that's not there (and that's not even the worse part).Giving Dean a hard look, Michael drops the shotgun back into the trunk. "Call me Sam," he says, and slams the trunk shut.
was a great turning point.
But this was even better, and so unexpected:
the face of John Winchester is burned into my brain. But I know damn well who he is. He's sitting right behind me.
Damn!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-10 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 12:37 am (UTC)::cries::
This...is amazing.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-19 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-11 10:10 pm (UTC)