Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dean presses the snooze button on his alarm.

6:45.

He’s awake. Mostly. Depends on the definition of ‘awake.’ If it’s not sitting up, running a hand over his face, through his hair, and then promptly plopping his head down on the pillow again…well, the world is shit out of luck.

He couldn’t actually fall asleep again, not anymore–eight hours is more than enough recovery time after a grueling hunt. But his body still protests, still urges him to lay still, to settle down, to pay special attention to all the joints and creaks…

For five more minutes.

Just five.

So his mind, too, can drift. So he can laze around in the luxury of a quiet morning. So he can throttle the thoughts in his head to a standstill and just stare at the ceiling. No thoughts about his mother or Castiel or everything that’s gone to to hell in a handbasket lately.

Quiet. Sam in one piece, devil’s kid not currently burning the world to a crisp.

In Winchester world, it’s a win.

Plus, maybe it’s his lucky morning, because there’s music traveling down the hallway and reaching his ears. Soft jazz, hushed, undemanding.

Dean smiles softly at the ceiling for a few seconds, just a twist of his lips.

Finally - Sam’s taste in music is evolving.

~

Sam’s at the big table surrounded by three book towers – two reaching alarming heights, one thankfully still within safety regulation limits – along with his laptop, notepads, and printed paper sheets.

There’s a system to all of it, Sam always says.

Yeah, Dean thinks, there is – one that turns Sam from a functioning member of society into an information zombie. Ruffled hair sticking out in ways Dean didn’t even think were possible, bloodshot eyes scanning the screen of the laptop intently. Dark circles under his eyes are  a measure of the amount of caffeine and black tea Sam’s gone through while Dean was sleeping.

It’s easy to guess what Sam was doing. Reading about alternate universes, how to parent the gifted child of Satan, organizing their archives, scanning the news for cases, and probably putting together a plan to save endangered species.

His usual multitasking.

Dean has to acknowledge Sam’s good at it.  

He steps inside the room and his robe flairs over his pajama pants, actress kicking her long dress at the Oscars-level dramatic. His gaze goes to the record player on the cabinet.

Same album, the one from last night, their only company for silence and a glass of whiskey.

“I liked it,” Sam’s voice breaks the perfect rhythm.

He sounds hoarse, weak.

“Of course you did,” Dean answers, “my music taste is fantastic.”

He’ll ignore the fact that he found the disc in the Men of Letters archives and put it on just for kicks.

Dean lets himself fall in the chair across from Sam, blinking the room into focus.

“Food and coffee.”

Sam squints at him over the laptop.

“What?”

“Food, coffee, you, me.” A second look at Sam. “Well, maybe no coffee for you, you’re like the before picture in an ad for eye allergies. But food. We’re going out for food,” Dean finishes.

 And Sam, instead of arguing, because Sam can’t be counted on to be predictable in the most critical of situations, namely, mornings–just nods, closes the lid of his laptop, and looks at Dean expectantly.

Dean stares right back at him.

“Going out for breakfast is a good idea,” Sam says after a few moments, when he realizes Dean hasn’t recently acquired powers of mind reading, “just…can we make it a diner in Virginia?”

Dean tries to kickstart his brain to a higher function setting.

“Virginia.”

“Bedford, actually,” Sam replies, entirely too animated as he reaches for a few sheets of paper in the tray of the printer. He slides them over to Dean.

Dean takes less than ten seconds to switch into case mode, which is no small feat, considering.

“What am I looking at?”

“Here,” Sam says, pointing at the title of a recent article.

Bedford Bulletin–Town in mourning as promising young man dies in museum

Dean looks up, opens his mouth to say something. Mostly about Sam’s definition of not clickbait and worth checking.

“Read the next one,” Sam urges.

“Sam–“

“Please.”

Damn it. It should be illegal for Sam to use the puppy eyes in the morning, when Dean’s defenses are not what they should be.

He caves, thumbs the title on the next article.

Bedford, VA among counties with highest missing persons rate

Right.

Follwed by Search for missing teacher called off after 3 weeks

Fascinating.

And all related. Not randomly gathered news and exhausted Sam seeing invisible patterns.

However, Dean’s ready to knock Sam out on principle, get some sleep into him before letting him back in the vicinity of information sources.

“Look, Sam–“

But Sam anticipates it. He uncovers another printed article from the pile.

“Here.”

Teen becomes fourth victim this year in case of mysterious disappearances

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Did mysterious tip you off, Sammy?”

It’s something. But still so very freaking thin. If they followed every lead like this…well, they would be in for a lot of sightseeing across the country and very little actual hunting.

“It’s not just that,” Sam shakes his head, fingers picking out another article. “It’s a lot of disappearances –two last year, four this one–and still counting. And the guy who died–there’s something weird there, too–the date of death in the obituary is two days later than the report in the museum.”

“God knows there’s no fake news anywhere.“

Apparently, Sam does not appreciate sarcasm so early.

“Dean…” he starts, but stops to choose his words carefully. “I know this is little to go on–but I have a feeling about it.”

“And you’re sure this…“ Dean makes an all-encompassing gesture with his hands, ”…feeling won’t go away with a few hours of sleep?”

Sam just stares at him.  

“Fine,” Dean sighs. “But you’re napping. In the car,” he adds, before Sam can say anything. “I’m not going anywhere with you looking like a strung-out junkie. And we leave the Antichrist here, he can watch Scooby Doo or some other cartoon.”

“You’re very funny.”

“I know. Sam…“ Dean stops grinning as Sam stands up. “Why are you packing the entire freaking library?”

Sam, in the middle of lifting three volumes that look like extensive works on world history, just looks at Dean.

Right.

For some reason, they need it.

Dean can read minds. It’s a gift.

He rolls his eyes, “Just don’t bitch if I use one of ‘em as a coaster for my beer.”

But he’s just snarking at empty air–Sam’s already halfway to his room, probably nodding condescendingly and rejoicing in ruining Dean’s morning.

~

In the car Dean puts on Genesis’ Foxtrot, which is A) a classic and B) something that annoys Sam more than Dean leaving dirty socks in the sink. It’s not that Sam’s heard it countless times–well, not entirely–but the fact that he usually ends up grudgingly drumming the rhythm with his fingers, caught between wrinkling his nose at anything Dean pulls out of his collection on principle and admitting that he actually likes it.

And the thing is, Sam knows what Dean’s doing, but because his last name is Winchester, and the stubborn as a mule trait is a legacy, he won’t say anything, he’ll just glare the paint off the side mirror and pick something else to bitch about the rest of the trip. 

But this time, after half an hour, of which they dedicate only a perfunctory ten minutes to bickering about how Google Maps is not going to tell Dean how to drive across the country, while completely ignoring the shit ton of important, essential things about which they actually need to be talking, Sam falls asleep, exhausted, coming down after the caffeine-induced rush of adrenaline.

And Dean…well, Dean’s got the pleasant intro of Supper’s Ready, Sam in one Sasquatch-sized piece, and the road in front of him.

For a little while there’s nothing else he needs.

~

Sam comes to about six hours later, a sharp inhale over the Impala’s engine and his body jerking forward, hand reaching instinctively forward towards the dashboard.

Dean glances at his brother.

Sam’s blinking rapidly, shaking his head a little, undoubtedly feeling the godawful position he’d been sleeping in.

“Morning, Sammy.”

Sam mumbles something.

Sam reboot time is anywhere between ten seconds and four minutes. Depends on where he is and what he’s been dreaming.

This time falls somewhere in the middle, three or four cars passing before Sam comes back to reality.  

“Where are we?” he asks, and Dean gives him points for coherence.

“About ten hours to go, or one till nearest decent bed and dinner.”

Sam shakes his head. “We can switch. Let you catch a few z’s in the back seat.”

It’s what Dean wanted to hear. He isn’t tired–not yet–and the prospect of stopping, adding more time to an already long journey isn’t very appealing.

He doesn’t want to stop. He wants to drive, to do, and not to be…to enjoy the righteous anger of killing the bad stuff. Except he’s tired of how it never ends. Dean wants Sam to stop, to stop trying to make a difference. And yet - he needs Sam to keep going.

“Later,” Dean says succinctly, nodding.

He hears some rustling, and a few seconds later, Sam produces his laptop and a stack of files from the back seat.

“There’s some protein bars in there, too, you know.”

Sam’s hand travels back to the duffel bag behind his seat sheepishly.

“Want one?”

“Nah, stopped to eat while you were doing your impression of Sleeping Beauty.”

Sam’s face turns from pleased to surprised to indignant in less than it takes for Dean to burst out in a shit-eating grin that almost feels good, which is an achievement, considering how little Dean’s found funny lately.

“Eat your protein,” Dean advises a huffy Sam in the seat next to him, “and tell me more about the case.”

Sam does. Sam tells him about last and this year’s disappearances while Dean’s driving, losing names along the markings of the road, details floating in Dean’s mind aimlessly. All Dean thinks is that it’s a weird demographic for the victims, with teens, middleT-aged men and women, and even senior citizens–no distinct type, nothing to give an idea about what could be responsible.

Sam recounts the story of the young man who kicked the bucket in the small town museum–guy and his girlfriend snuck in after hours, garbled 911 call, no explanation of what happened, followed by a closed casket funeral—okay, Dean has to admit it sounds weird. He decides to consider it a bedtime story before he crashes on the not-so-soft–definitely not memory foam mattress soft back seat.

When Dean wakes, the sun’s first rusty rays of sunshine greet him. Sam’s silent, though the radio is on, volume so low Dean can barely hear it.

“We’re almost there,” Sam says when he realizes Dean is awake, voice like gravel, soft and cracked, like he’s just remembered how to speak.

Dean barely processes. His mind still clings to dreams of soft fingers and Beatles song lyrics.

Sam…Sam’s still talking.

They’re going to a memorial service, apparently. The museum kid’s.

Dean nods, lets his head fall back down on the duffel bag he’d used as pillow.

Dean doesn’t close his eyes again, just watches the blur of images passing by in the side window, and lets himself feel the sun’s barely-there warmth through his jeans.

~

“What’s the name of this guy again?” Dean asks while walking to the front door of the small house.

White, small patio in front, the epitome of nondescript.

Sam dutifully replies. “Cory Stadler, 26, says in the obituary he died from complications of a genetic heart disease.”

“Right.”

Hell of a life, Dean thinks. To die at 26–without tempting fate and a few Wendigos or angry spirits along the way, it seems like a crap deal. Sam looks appropriately affected, too. Though, knowing Sam, that’s actual empathy and actually sincere. It’ll go well with the plaid wearing, distant-but-mournful old friends act they’ve got going.

Sam had found a Facebook page of the deceased, and consequently declared they were going as old college friends of Cory. Stanford and history major was all Dean needed to hear before agreeing to it. Coincidentally, Sam had also learned that Cory was a Game of Thrones fan, that he had an abnormal aversion to spaghetti, and that his girlfriend’s name was Peony.

Peony.

Not grief counselors or priests – thanks to technology, they know enough to fake a relationship. 

Dean has wisely picked the first line of questioning, and decided that if anyone asks about a course or a professor, or anything related to university, or brings up any flower names, he’ll just make a Daenrys-themed love party.  

At the door, he shifts his stance into something he hopes screams less I know how to use a machete and more frat party, and knocks on the white wood lightly.

A woman opens. Blonde, middle-aged, slim, eyes red-rimmed with tears.

The mom, probably.

“Yes?” she half-asks, looking at Dean.

But it’s Sam who answers, making the whole Stanford spiel sound almost true, even to Dean’s ears.

The woman doesn’t really listen to it–after a few words, she just motions them in, and in a pointed, trembling gesture shows them the kitchen–for a casserole they didn’t bring–and the living room where a considerable number of people are gathered.

Sam disappears with the mom, but not before nodding slightly towards Dean, eyes turning warm and soft and molten whiskey instead of their usual gold and green.

Empathy.

Every so often, Dean catches a glimpse of Sam that unwillingly reminds him of cold, dark, soulless eyes staring at him from Sam’s face.

He shakes his head, chases the broken pieces of his memory away.

Dean starts scanning the room, looking for suspicious faces.

A girl, sitting alone on the couch. Jeans, black. Blouse, also black, slightly see-through and something white beneath it. Pale, long hair covering half her face as she stares down, studies the floor intently. It’s weird that Dean even noticed her sitting there, her presence is so undemanding, small, just a tiny whiff of perfume in the air when Dean steps closer.

Dean fixes his gaze on how she picks at a few small silver studs on the cuff of her blouse. Without conscious thought, he hogs all the empty space left on the brown leather couch.

She raises her eyes, surprised.

No tears. No makeup.

“Hey,” Dean says, voice low, gentler than he intended. “Dean. Friend of Cory’s.”

No reaction. He keeps talking.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

That’s less gentle. That’s monotonic, standard, words that reek of the knowledge that Dean has forgotten what they mean.

She smiles–sincerely, sadly.

“I heard you at the door. Friends of Cory from Stanford. I’m Peony. Cory’s girlfriend.”

Dean knows, had guessed it almost instantly.

There are a few moments of somewhat awkward silence.

“You’re the first one to talk to me,” Peony says, finally, voice stronger, more certain than initially.

“Yeah?”

She nods.

“They think…well, they think I had something to do with it. With Cory’s death,” she adds, voice fissuring on the last word.

Dean plays dumb. “I thought it was a genetic heart disease.”

“Yeah…” she agrees, something in her eyes changing. “But apparently being with him when he collapsed counts as guilt in this.”

“That’s stupid.”

Well, Dean’s not quite the whisperer for the emotionally fragile like Sam is.

But she laughs, surprised, a little too loud over the quiet conversations of the people around. The effect–the reaction of everyone surrounding them–glowering, disgusted, dramatic pursing of lips, and an infinitely annoying tsk-tsk, accompanied by a shake of head by someone who looks suspiciously at Peony just confirms her appraisal of the situation.

When Dean finishes glaring at everyone, he turns back toward Peony. She’s blushing slightly–and Dean’s at the point of saying something, anything along the lines of goddamn people, but she talks first, doesn’t give him the opportunity.

“It’s okay…I…well, they’re not really wrong.”

Dean waits for her to continue.

But she doesn’t – she lets her head fall forward, starts playing again with her cuff.

“Peony – “

“I thought…I really thought he was being overdramatic. Putting on an act to…I don’t know, impress me?”

She’s staring at Dean now, and what Dean finds in her eyes is mesmerizing. Intelligence, strength in blue with strokes of green that offer a challenge to anyone who would want to assign a definite color to them. They’re vibrant…and utterly devastated.

“I thought he was joking. I didn’t think anything would happen…”

Dean doesn’t even get a chance to ask – she isn’t stopping.

“Cory was the kind of guy who could make a fun, laugh-till-your-belly-hurts date out of sneaking in after hours to a small, dusty, depressing museum. He was telling me all kinds of stories about each piece of this town’s history, and some weren’t exactly true to the past…or PG-rated. When he talked about the book and the legend around it, I took it as a dare. So I wrote his name…” she pauses to steady her voice, “and he …disappeared. Like – like  he was never there!”

The look in her eyes shifted somewhere along the string of words, and she became a warrior, fierce, alive, burning, ready to take on the world, to fight everyone and everything.

“I called the cops, but they didn’t take me seriously…or they did, but just didn’t care. They just hustled me out and told me they’d handle it. And two days later there’s a funeral.”

Her body doesn’t look comfortable on the couch, long arms and legs pulled in to take as little space as possible. She doesn’t want to be there, in this room, with these people. 

“I’ve tried to understand…but it doesn’t feel like I can.”

There are tears in her eyes that she doesn’t let fall.

“He made me laugh so much.”

“Yeah, Cory was like that,” Dean says, fully aware he’s treading dangerous territory.

”He just…looked at me. I was laughing. I was laughing, but I knew there was something wrong. I didn’t even have time to say something –“

That instant, when you know, when you realize that your world just changed, cracked in all the important places, and there’s jack shit you can do about it.

Yeah, Dean’s familiar.

She stops, coherence lost,  pleas in her desperate, tear-filled eyes.

“Hey,” Dean says, voice soft, then stronger, “there’s nothing you could have done.”

Maybe she needs to hear it.

Or maybe Dean likes to say it to account for all the times he failed, when those he loved died in front of him.

Either way, she doesn’t respond. She cries soundlessly, hides her face with shaking hands. Dean watches, tries to ignore it. He understands – but right now, he can’t let himself feel it. This is too close, this is the crack that opens the floodgates to something Dean can’t handle right now.

He stays there, on the couch, staring at the bland cream walls and framed family pictures until Sam returns to the room. His brother’s hand on his shoulder, a questioning look–and that’s the cue for Dean to move, to rise, to come back.

He wants to say goodbye.

But Peony’s gone.

To Dean, right now, it almost feels like he imagined all of it.

~

“You okay?” Sam asks.

Dean rolls his eyes, eyeing the food and expertly avoiding Sam’s gaze.

“I’m fine, Sam.”

Sam wants to say something. But Dean doesn’t give him the chance. He starts walking towards the stack of empty plates, starts talking, erasing the previous conversation thread.

“Did you get anything from the mom?”

“Not much,” Sam replies, delayed, and God only knows what faces he’s making behind Dean’s back. “She’s shifty.”

Qualifications like that from Sam necessitate a double take, fork and plate in hand.

“Shifty? Not upset? Not…grief-ridden?”

Sam’s lips become one thin line.

“Quit it, Dean,” because it’s like pressing a button and switching a setting. “She’s not telling all of it.”

“Like what?”

“Like the two day gap between him collapsing in the museum and the obituary.”

Dean arches an eyebrow. “His girlfriend said he vanished, not collapsed.”

Sam shrugs, eyeing the room. “That’s the weird thing. Nobody’s talking about it. They change the subject as soon as I ask about what the hospital said.”

Huh.

“Well, might not be the case for the hospital – what I got from her is that this funeral ain’t exactly…”

“What?”

Dean tilts his head, studies the food options.

“Just saying we should check for a body, too. Peony says the funeral was closed casket…and these people are a little too chill around here about the Houdini act.”

“All the reports from the news, Dean—happens here all the time.”

Right.

“Any cameras at the museum?”

Sam shakes his head. “Had the same thought. Asked around and had a very interesting conversation with a deputy, but small town, they don’t have anything worth stealing, apparently. The museum’s largely printed copies of important historical documents and a section of school kids’ art. And a handful of journals from folks who’d lived here dating back to the late 1800s.”

“Fantastic.”

Dean wishes this would be a straightforward thing, as in, he wishes he had any idea what’s happening.

 ~

They end up leaving late, half because Dean had found a mac and cheese casserole worthy of the Gods dining on it, and half because Sam condones stealing from the grieving.

The motel they settle on for a decent night’s sleep is a postcard for American road life, more so than the Impala’s wrapper-coated backseat floor before Dean cleans it. A small fleet of trucks waiting for their owner in the parking lot, a small reception room smelling of potato chips, stale beer and dust, and almost no sound beyond the buzz of a burning light and the occasional comment of the middle-aged guy that insists on Sam signing up in the registry.

“Look,” he tells them, utterly bored, “write Butch and Sundance Kid, for all I care. Everyone has to sign in for a key.”

Right.

Every citizen does his duty.

Including Sam, who scribbles something in the lined logbook. It looks old as time–creamy colored papers, leather bound – something Dean’d expect to find in a medieval-themed inn, not this crap hole that’s one cleaning lady away from being the ground zero for a hazmat team.

Dean rolls his eyes, leaves with the bags and the room key.

It’s after a shower and a meal that the curiosity gets to him.

“Butch or Sundance?” Dean asks.

 “Winchester,” Sam shrugs. “Just gonna own it.”

Dean allows himself a small grin. “Atta boy, Sammy.”

~

When Dean sleeps, it’s nightmares tangled in lucid dreams. After, when the thoughts linger, it’s checking that Sam’s still asleep, oblivious to the hours spent motionless, headphones on, staring at the ceiling, music shouting at him.

Get up,  go to the museum, look at multiple old journals trying to determine which is the one Peony had defaced, find a place where one of the books has been removed but the curator knows nothing, come back to the motel, shower, argue with Sam, eat.

And argue with Sam some more, because research is boring. 

“Are you ever gonna tell me why you brought an entire bookcase and a file cabinet’s worth of paper with us?”

Sam looks over from the table.

“What?”

Dean just makes an all-encompassing gesture with his hand as he sits down on the motel bed.

“Oh, yeah,” Sam replies, gaze traveling over the piles of paper and books on the desk. ”Just a hunch.”

“A no-internet hunch?”

Sam purses his lips. “Somewhat. Not exactly. That,” he says, pointing towards the ancient books, “is because Bedford looks like a place of passing.”

“A place of what?”

“Passing.”

“Sam.”

“It’s a place...a point in space, actually, equidistant to the entrance of Heaven and the Gates of Hell.”

Dean stares for a moment.

He’s – Sam’s…kidding. Right?

He would have told Dean if there was a mention of Gates of Hell in the case?

“And you were planning on telling me this when?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Sam replies, somewhat defensively. “The internet only mentions the part about Gates of Hell. But that didn’t exactly fit, so I went digging deeper.”

“What didn’t fit?”

Dean has to make an effort to switch to this frequency.

“Well, there’s no evil energy emanating from it.”

 “Sam – “

“Right,” Sam says, blinking away the start of Dean’s explosion, “actually, that’s the explanation, Dean. There is energy, but not evil. Not good, either. Just...something. People don’t know how to interpret it. ”

Dean frowns.

“That’s why you needed the books?”

“Yeah, I found a few different theories online, but none with sufficient consistency…so I went digging in the Men of Letters library. Anyway – some say it’s just a place with good properties to do magic, to draw from it. But some theorize that it’s a place of crossing, or, rather, waiting for souls that haven’t been delivered to Hell or Heaven.”

Ah, Jesus. Sam’s overcomplicated tendencies are spreading to their surroundings.

Dean likes ghosts. And wraiths, and werewolves. Vampires.

Easy problems to fix.

Souls…that’s another thing completely.  

“Waiting? Waiting for what?”

“Judgement,” Sam replies, twist of his lips that tells Dean exactly how Sam feels about it. “After death, to decide where your soul should be sent.”

Dean thinks for a moment.

Right, stairway to heaven, highway to hell kind of thing.

But what does it have to do with their case? With half a dozen random disappearances and the death of a seemingly great kid?

“Sam, that’s fascinating, but–“

Sam interrupts.

“I just –“

He opens his mouth to continue, but all he ends up doing is closing his opened palm into a fist, and lightly tapping the table with it. Sam code for frustration.

He leans over the table, leafs through a pile of thin dossiers and printed sheets.

 “Look,” he says, walking over to hand a file to Dean. “First weird thing I could find happening here – 1905. A disappearance…except, not really. It was more like a coming back from the dead thing.”

“What?” Dean asks, taking the folder.

There’s three articles in it – or, rather, scanned photos of old, very old newspapers. An obituary and two seemingly unrelated Bedford celebrates something or other types of titles. 

“Look at the pictures,” Sam urges.

Dean does. He first looks at the picture in the obituary – a woman, features dark and angular, hair pulled up in loose curls. Then he switches to the 10 year anniversary of town hall inauguration article, and the large picture that almost covers the front page of the newspaper.

There, at the edges of the image – discolored hues of black and white, but unmistakable–it’s her, too. Slightly older, different hairstyle, but the same woman.

“That’s six years after the obituary. And that,“ Sam points to the other article, 4^th of July, 1912 in Bedford, Virginia, “that’s her, too.”

This one is different. It’s a candid, rather than an official photo, like the other one. It’s even more clear that it’s the same woman, dressed in festive clothes, fancy hat and all, surrounded by a small group of children and an American flag.

“Okay, weird,” Dean agrees, “but what’s with the others?”

Sam turns to look at the piles.

“They’re disappearances. All of them. Actual disappearances going back to the early 1900’s.”

“Going back to this,” Dean says, pointing to the sheets of paper in his lap.

“Yeah. I don’t know if they are connected to our case. The weird thing is, Dean, most of these people returned. Dead, but their bodies returned but in various states. Some completely decomposed, bones almost clean. And some just reappeared like they disappeared. Like they’d died right then.”

“So? They fled their lives, died somewhere of teeth rotting or the common cold.”

“Dean,” Sam breathes, a sharp exhale coupled with an aborted, full-bodied motion that tells Dean that he’s in for a good, long-winded explanatory speech, “we are not talking about the medieval ages, and seriously, almost a hundred people? Just up and left, and they all came back dead? ”

Dean stays silent.

He hates to admit that Sam has a point. Because usually, when Sam has a point, Dean is on the other side of it. But he takes it like a champ, focuses on the important parts.

“So you think they were in an alternate universe, caught in this place of…passing?”

Sam shakes his head.

“Not alternate universe. Actually…” Sam starts, chancing a cautious look at Dean. ”The Underworld.”

It’s a reverse Pavlovian thing, because all Dean can say to such a statement is, “That’s Greek mythology, isn’t it?”

Sam has trained the surprise out of him.

“Yeah,” Sam nods. “I think it’s a valid theory. Places of passing are ideal for this, especially if we’re talking about holding judgements. You’d need a place that’s inherently neutral, that doesn’t have ties to either Heaven or Hell.”

“But I thought afterlife Judge Judy was an ancient Egyptian. The heart and feather thing? The one we—” I—“ran into a few years back?”

“Yes,“ Sam agrees. “But there’s another version, that of the ancient Greeks.”

He walks over to the table again, picks up the thickest book and searches for something while Dean is left to ponder when dealing with the rest of the freaking gods in the world became part of their job.

Chuck was enough, thank you very much.

Even back when the most complicated part about him was Mistress Magda.

“Do they have annihilation from existence, too, if you’re an asshole? Or – let me guess – something even more cheery.”  

“Well, they have Tartarus,” Sam offers. “And they have Hydras. And Harpies. And Chimeras…actually, war, grief, hunger, fear, diseases, death, agony –“

“All the greatest hits,” Dean mutters to himself while Sam continues to enumerate painful ways to die–and live.

“The Entrance is Charon and the river Styx. To pass, and reach the Gates of the Underworld, you have to carry a coin under your tongue to pay him. Then it’s Cerberus, and after that, an area where they hold the Judgement. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus review the deeds of the dead, and send each soul to one of three places: Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or Tartarus. Tartarus is where they keep all the monsters.”

Dean frowns.

“Fields of what?”

There’s one too many things for his nicely put together Heaven and Hell theory.

Sam nods, almost excitedly.

Of course. Because Sam’s more tickled by ancient history than by girls in string bikinis.

“So Tartarus is Hell, more or less, a dark abyss full of the creatures from your worst nightmares,” Sam explains, turning back to one of the books. “Night is poured around it in three rows like a collar round the neck, it says here. Elysium is our version of Heaven, designed for righteous and virtuous people. Though,” Sam continues, slightly troubled, “it’s also mentions that the ones who get in are usually close to the gods…demigods, heroes, that kind of thing.”

Dean rolls his eyes. Only Sam could be unsettled by forms of cosmic nepotism. 

Seriously, even Dean knows the ancient gods were a questionable bunch of creatures.

“And the Aspho - something fields?” he asks, hoping to get his brother back on track.

It is, after all, what Dean had originally asked about.

But this is Sam’s weird history fetish, so he’s indulgent about it. 

Sam turns a few pages in the huge bound book. ”Where the spirits dwell living the flavorless existence of a shadow or a phantom,” he reads, following the line with his fingers. “It’s neither punishment nor reward, just…obliviousness and confusion.”

Dean has to think about it a few seconds to figure out why that is bad – why that doesn’t equal peace, a short reprieve from a life in which the hits keep coming, never-ending, crushing weight of losses and needing and fighting.

He changes the subject seamlessly.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the crash course in history, Sammy, but let me get this–you think these people somehow got lost in the Underworld for a number of years, then came back, dead, ranging from minty fresh to shish kebab?”

“It makes sense.”

To Sam.

“Look, Dean…they all died from…well, natural causes. That’s what all the autopsies say. They just…disappeared for a while before it. The deaths I could find out about were attributed to disease, a series of injuries, unfortunate animal encounters…nothing that jumps out. And, on the other hand, there’s years with one disappearance, years with five, years with none. The length of time they disappeared varies from two months to ten years, with no trend one way or another. And the victims are men, women, young, older, in between –“

“Kids?”

There’s a pause, one or two seconds where Sam’s forehead crinkles, and memory searching process is activated.

“No, none,” he finally answers, frowning. “Huh.” He looks surprised, like he hadn’t even thought about it. “There’s got to be a pattern, a logical explanation,” Sam says, thoughtfully, glancing at two piles of case files on the table, “but I can’t see it.”

Dean follows his gaze.

“So this is why you aren’t saving the trees, enjoying the joys of modern technology.”

Sam glances up, smiles warily. “You up for an old school run at it?”

“Depends on what you’re thinking.”

Instead of answering, Sam snatches the keys of the Impala, and disappears through the door. He comes back before Dean has a chance to formulate any preventative form of protest with a two-by-two map of Bedford, a small box full of pins, and an expression that’s half sheepish and half psychopathic, entirely too excited as he attaches the map to the motel room wall. 

Dean stares speechlessly at the…thing happening.

It takes a minute to process – but, hey, Dean’s cool with it.

 More than cool, actually.

There’s something to be said about seeing their case laid out like that–about the illusion of going back to a time where things were simpler, where every creature they hunted could be found in their Dad’s journal, a pattern found by putting it up on the wall.

“Sam?”

His brother turns, having just finished sticking a pin in the square representing the museum.

“Gimme,” Dean says, motioning towards the table’s contents.

Sam arches an eyebrow.

“I read, you pin.”

If Dean reads locations, names, links out loud and Sam marks them on the wall then they’re both hearing and seeing it , and it has to be better, because both of them working together has always been.

Dean leans back on a pillow, and starts listing off coordinates for the first file–the woman–Helen A. Kostoupoulos. Sam, for his part, takes about two seconds then he’s on – marking down places of disappearance against places of body findings in a color-coordinated frenzy. Dean doesn’t really know if at the end they’ll be left with more clarity or less–if they’ll find coordinates for the Underworld or the location of Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility–but at least Sam’s going to get to satisfy his OCD tendencies.

~

After three long hours, Dean shifts on the bed, body protesting, pins and needles running up his legs to his thighs.

Dean grimaces, rubs at his tired eyes.  

They’re almost done. Two more people. The most recent victims.

But the letters and numbers swim in front of Dean’s eyes, black ink dripping on white, making his eyes pinch.

Something doesn’t feel right. The temperature, maybe – it’s hot – not a sudden shift, just Dean noticing the heavy air around him. And the mattress – too soft, like water. Dean feels like he’s sinking, a wave of too-dense air is swallowing him.

“Sam?”

His brother turns away from the wall, glances at him. Dean notices beads of sweat on Sam’s forehead, the unfocused gaze, the way his right hand shakes against the wall.

“Sam – something –“

…is wrong, Dean wants to say.

But words won’t come, sound doesn’t want to emerge from his mouth. There’s a curtain between them in a world that’s been slowed down, liquefied.

Dean’s movements are sluggish when he reaches for his gun–he feels weightless and impossibly heavy at the same time–but more than his body has been robbed of motion or drive. His thoughts blur, collide with each other and spread like gas in a room, filling every corner, every nook, every little part of Dean that’s alive.

His fingers don’t get to touch the cold metal of the Berretta.

The walls come down before he can. The faded orange wallpaper melts–and this is why Sam’s sweating, this is why he hasn’t moved in such a long time–it’s too hot, heat replacing air and enveloping Dean’s body like a carcass.

He wants to shout, to run from it. To touch cold, to feel a gust of wind.

But he can’t.

He can’t, because he doesn’t really want to.

It’s easier to just close his eyes, let the beckoning emptiness seep into his body with every breath.

Sam.

There’s a thought, distant, impossibly light, with no meaning at all.

Sam.  

The beginning of a fall.

~

Somehow, absurdly, it feels like his eyes were always open, waiting for the unknown. The ground that meets Dean – stone, hard, cold – just gives the signal to the rest of his body.

He moves. Uncurls, untwists. Feels.

Sound–his own voice.

“Sam?”

Sandpaper-rough, without echo.

There wouldn’t be, Dean realizes as he looks around – there are no walls.

There’s no reply.

No voice, just…sound. Audible exhales, slow, drawn out, shocked. The rustle of clothes and something scraping at the ground. Dean lifts his too-heavy head, looks around as best he can.

Sam’s on his back, left hand raised towards the sky, his right resting against the smooth stones of the ground. Dean watches Sam blink for what feels like a minute at a time.

Dean breathes. Relief floods through him.

Sam’s fine.

Just processing. Sam’s brain, short-circuiting, trying to get here, now.

Dean lets his head hit the ground slowly, closes his eyes.

Sometimes he wonders how a day’s plans can go this bad.

~

No, scratch that. It’s not bad–it’s a fucking code black.

Or red.

Or whichever color stands for “not in imminent danger of death, but really, really fucked up”.

There’s a problem Dean hadn’t realized he had.

Like, existential-level kind of crap.

Sam…well, Sam can’t see him.

In Bizarro World, Dean’s apparently faded out, because Sam’s currently looking straight through Dean, eyes wide, body taut, gun raised, pointed at nothing in particular.

There’s not really anything to point a gun at.

Just Dean, the freaking air, and the ground.  

Dean listens to Sam call his name, again and again, as if Sam says it enough times, his brother will suddenly materialize from the creamy white fog that surrounds them.

Dean answers, the first few times. Or, at least, he thinks he does. He tries to shout back. But his voice hits the walls of his own body, reverberates and ricochets inside his mind, and doesn’t make it outside. He isn’t even sure if he’s opening his mouth.

And Sam – Sam’s features go from shocked to concerned to scared to tight, determined, “I’m gonna kill anything and everything that stands in my way to get back” so fast, Dean doesn’t know whether to be worried or proud.

Dean doesn’t really know how to feel, period.

Besides creeped the hell out.

This place–this field of off-white foam, heavy clouds on a dull grey background, that curves and stretches in time with Dean’s breath, that moves whenever he steps, just a bit farther, just a bit closer…uneven waves of tangible air that roll, dance, play with Dean’s mind–this place makes Dean feel  too light, and…non-existent, so that if he closes his eyes again, if he denies his mind a clear perception of the outside, the illusion that he exists, he would disappear, dissipate in grains of sand and glass.  

So he stays alert. He tethers himself to here, now by sheer will, holds on with both hands to the edge of a reality he doesn’t understand.

He watches Sam take in his surroundings, silent, calculating. Dean looks with him, follows the trajectory the barrel of Sam’s gun draws.

Nothing.

Everything, everywhere is the same.

And nothing is, because Dean can’t talk, he can’t touch, he doesn’t have any palpable connection to Sam.

He follows. Sam’s movement is the only roadmap Dean has. The ground curves, dips under Dean’s boots, silent echo of Sam’s.

~

See, Dean thought that Sam’s sudden enthusiasm – no, obsession with this case was Sam’s  twisted, fucked up way of coming to grips with the truth that Mom and Cas are dead, gone, not ever coming back. Because that’s the way Sam is: when shit hits the fan, he keeps his head down. He works harder, he drives harder, he concentrates on everything else going on, except the obvious, and he says nothing unless it is Dean, you’re not fine until he hits his giant head on a wall.

And Dean had seen it in the long, sleepless nights, the dark circles under Sam’s eyes. The way he’d been either jacked up, ready, bulldozer meet brick wall, or just…there. Body present, mind too far away and all the real world gets is not a gesture more than the situation demands. 

Dean had seen it.

But it was…normal. Like always. Just on the right side of wrong.  

But now Dean looks at the way his little brother is walking, gun raised, expression set–forward–into the unknown, into possible death without batting an eye.

Sam…he’s fine.

Right?

Dean follows along an invisible path.

They pass the same colors, the same semblance of a sky, until Dean sees a slight shift in the loss of light– ash gray becoming carbonite. Abruptly there’s green, and wind–a tree in the distance, the sound of leaves rustling–impossible mirage. The first indication that Sam’s Greek mythology stuff isn’t all crazy talk is a freaking river in the middle of the unending sea of clouds.

Sam calls for Dean a few more times as they come to the river, as the empty is filled by the sound of the tree’s branches humming through the air and the rushing water. His brother’s voice meets nothing but the hollow world, and its own inherent solace–the absence of an echo, the coldness that travels from inside out.

Dean doesn’t answer.

He walks.

He stops when Sam stops. He is  close, just a few breaths away from Sam.

And yet, he’s never felt so far.

~

It’s so sudden, the voice that cuts through the silence around.

“Sam Winchester…welcome.”

Dean is staring at the river–murky, dark blue, almost black in the strange light. Curling, roaring, reeking of wrong, of death.

“Charon,” Sam responds, at the same time as Dean turns towards the sound.

Sam’s voice is level, like he’d expected the thin silhouette that materializes out of freaking air–a man, disheveled hair and heavy robe that hangs too loose, makes him too tall. His face is gaunt, his eyes are discolored–devoid of any tint, any flicker to make them human. And his smile–it sends shivers up Dean’s spine, even if Dean is some kind of a ghost.

Point is, Sam should really be more freaked out.

“You know where you are,” Charon remarks, without surprise.

Sam doesn’t reply.

“Well, ruins the half the pleasure.”

Pleasure, burgers with side of curly fries.

Pleasure, hot, interested chick.

Pleasure – not this particular encounter.

Sam seems to think so, too, because he shifts his weight from one foot to  the other, steadies himself for what’s next.

 “A coin?” Sam asks, “I need a coin to pass, right?”

Charon smiles.

“Sam Winchester…do not hurry. You will get where you want. First, tell me,” he says, slowly, with a voice like honey – sweet, thick, enveloping, suffocating Dean’s thoughts, “what have you dreamt of?”

Dean’s gaze shoots to Sam.

What?

“Have you found your nightmares under the leaves? Or have you found your hopes, lost?”

The fuck is this guy on about?

If Dean had his gun…

As it is, he has himself, the clothes on his back, and a not negligible quantity of unsettling thoughts. And anger.

Anger that’s building on a half-understanding of the facts, anger that he can’t do anything right now.

But Sam is calm.

Or so it seems to Dean. Charon’s words don’t paint any new lines of worry on Sam’s features. The tight set of his lips is the only constant–and his eyes – Sammy’s badass hunter and little brother face in one.

“I have a coin. Let me pass.”

It’s less forceful than Dean would have said it, but Charon seems to get the idea, because he nods, makes some elaborate gesture with his hand.

The river—it has to be the Styx—stills.

Not just here, near their small portion of stony bank, but along the river’s length, as far as Dean can see, as far as the fog lets him.

A boat, simple, wooden, only decoration the spikes on its front and back–emerges from the water, rises right under Dean’s eyes.

Sam, with just a few seconds of delay, pulls out a handful of change from his pocket, holds it out.

It’s then, when he hears the coins clinking, that Dean’s fear setting kicks in – what if he can’t go with Sam? What if this is as far as the road takes him?

What is he?

Why is it that Sam seems flesh and bone and Dean just has a visitor’s pass?

But he doesn’t have time to freak out. Not completely, anyway.

Charon, now with an oar in his huge hand, imposingly taller than Sam, steps, wait, no, floats towards Sam. Dean wonders how he hadn’t noticed Charon’s lack of contact with the ground until now.

Oh, right, he was busy trying to figure out how to get into the freaking Underworld along with Sam.

The creature stops a few inches from Sam’s face, and yuck, no, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to trade places with his brother except smell this guy’s breath.

Charon studies Sam for a while. Smiling – deformed, ugly, not like any definition of smiling Dean has ever had until now–and Sam blinks. Closes his eyes tight.

Dean yells something that gets lost along with his fists flying high.

“Motherf– “

He’s not above cussing out ancient, soul-carrying ferrymen.

“Get away from him, you bastard!”

It’s about as effective as Dean throwing a napkin at the guy–the sound tapers off, dies out before it travels the four feet that separate them.

But Charon stops, nonetheless–he steps backwards, apparently content with whatever he saw, and turns his gaze to the change in Sam’s outstretched hand.

“This one,” he says, extending long, emaciated fingers to pick it out.

He raises his head and this time, he doesn’t look at Sam.

He looks at Dean–straight through him and Dean stills.

He stops any movement. Even breathing.

 “This one,“ Charon continues, holding Dean’s gaze while fingering his coin,  “This one has passed through all the right hands.”

~

The good thing about being a phantasm, Dean thinks, is that he doesn’t have to worry about how the boat rises and falls, how his body hits all the edges so hard when the impetuous river bashes against the side of their small, wooden cup.

Unlike Sam.

Dean wonders if A) either of them is still alive and B) if they are, will they survive this boat ride.

The Styx isn’t exactly friendly.

It pushes against the boat, extends fluid claws just over the edge where Sam’s right hand is clasped around the wood to steady himself. It roars, in places it deafens, a solitary, reverberating sound that, along with fear, forms a single track in Dean’s mind.

Shadows begin to play with the light, and it becomes less incandescent, weak–the dark has colors, fuzzy navy blue and seaweed, drooping against the Underworld’s canvas. It paints the banks of the river closer and closer, until–

The boat stops.

It meets a gate, in a fence of tall, iron bars–as tall as this sky, lost in a cloud of coal dust, like a mountain with its peak covered in fog. It stretches to the edges of perception–wherever he looks, Dean can’t figure out where it stops, only inky, swirling black mist in the empty spaces and beyond.

 The ferryman turns towards them, no pleasantries, no small talk.

“End of your journey, Sam.”

Sam almost says thank you before getting out, Dean can see it on his face, but he restrains, for which Dean is proud.

Dean steps out, too, and almost thanks Charon himself for keeping the boat level while he does that. He doubts walking on water is included with the apparition package, and being invisible and wet in a climate where the next forecast might be rain, with a slight chance of blood – yeah, no, not something Dean has ever dreamt of.  

The ground here looks, impossibly, like burnt grass.

Dean looks at the iron barrier, then turns to stare at the boat that’s slowly drifting away along the now calm waters of the river.

He switches his gaze to Sam.

“Great. Now what?”

Even if Sam could hear the question, Dean doesn’t think he would have an answer to give back.

~

Sam spends hours staring at the massive iron wall.

He talks, and the first time he does, Dean almost jumps for joy, thinks he’s become material again and Sam is addressing him

But Sam’s talking to himself, thinking out loud.

“Something’s missing,” Sam mutters, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, Sam, like an appropriate amount of concern for your surroundings.”

Sam has the bright idea of standing with his back to any possible threat.

“Cerberus,” his brother continues, oblivious to Dean’s scowl.

Oh.

Right.

Dog, multiple heads.

“Sam, when there’s no monster with fifty heads where it should be, you say thank you to the universe, and pedal it!”

And, for once, Sam seems to be on the same cosmic wavelength, because he walks forward toward the looming gate, and begins to search for an opening. He’s touching, brushing his fingers along the bars, pressing–

“Argh,” Sam suddenly cries, and by the time Dean registers smell of burnt flesh, blood on Sam’s palm there’s a loud, screeching sound that chases everything else from his mind. A portion of the gate shifts, begins to inch backwards.

The view that forms through the crack is unexpectedly alive.

Field, open land, trees in the distance. No more cloudy mist.  

And voices.

Familiar, comforting, human. People, arguing out loud. An older man, a teenage girl, Cory. Peony.

Dean stops in his tracks.

Sam does, too, a few steps in front of him.

They’ve both seen the pictures in the house. Cory–tall, muscular, brown hair, warm eyes.  Also, dead.

But –

 “Peony?” Sam voices the shock for both of them.

The teenage girl, dressed in the epitome of rebellious phase and goth, is the first to respond.

“Dude,“ she says, “what happened to your hand?”

Sam stays silent, motionless, trying to understand.

Dean opens his mouth to reply instead. Or to ask a question himself, he isn’t sure – he’s a little too dumbstruck.

Sam finally realizes that he’s in this conversation now.

“The gate, when I touched it – “

He brings his right hand up. Blood drips in tiny rivulets down his wrist from a large, angry red wound in the middle of his palm.

“What number?” the older man asks.

He’s African-American, medium height. Thin, dark circles under his eyes. It’s a contrast to all the others, who, apart from a complicated relationship with death, are the picture of good health. 

“Two-three-nine-five.”

As Sam’s reciting it, the wound comes into focus for Dean, like an optical illusion looked at from the right angle. It settles into the distinct shapes of four digits, not just marred skin.

What the –

Dean’s half-concerned, half-pissed. Sam’s had worse injuries, but, still. What the fuck is this?

The older man answers Dean’s question without even hearing it.

“Each of us gets a number. That’s what they use when we get called in.”

Who’s they? In? In where?

“They?” Sam asks.

“Gods,” the goth girl replies while Cory shifts uncomfortably, then speaks up.

“Greeks, more exactly. Minos and Rhadamanthus. Brothers, ancient kings of Crete. And Aeacus, who was king of –“

Peony interrupts even as Dean acknowledges Sam’s geek-soulmate rivaling him in adjacent fact spouting.

“–nobody cares, Cory. Point is, they call your number, you go.”

Sam frowns.

“Go where?”

“To them,” she answers easily.

Right. Helpful. Very concrete.

“And they…“ Sam starts, trying to find an appropriate way to frame it. “They’re…judging?”

“They should be,” Cory again. “They should take into consideration your life, all you’ve done during it. But this…here, they don’t they’re–“

Goth girl winces. “Mean girls at a party. They’re freaking mean girls at a party, and you’re the weird kid. They don’t judge. It’s not a trial. Just an ordeal. They make you remember, feel everything.”

Dean’s expression of confusion mirrors Sam’s.

“What do you mean?” his brother asks carefully.

“What she means,” the older guy says, voice low and weak, “is that you will know where you belong by the time they finish.”

There’s silence for a few moments, and then Sam nods, small gesture, pensive. Maybe he understands more than Dean.

“And you’ve been–“

“Yes. Do not recommend it,” he replies, smiling sadly.

Sam pauses. Thinks. Nods again, like a ritual gesture.  

“Right. Well, I’m getting you out of here.”

Everyone stares at him.

The teenage girl, unsurprisingly, is the first one who speaks.

“Dude, I don’t know if you noticed, but this is like, Hades, and you’re like, dead.”

Dean has to admit she has a point. He turns to Sam expectantly.

“I don’t think I’m dead yet,” Sam corrects, frowning.

Dean wisely chooses not to focus on the yet thing. Instead, he mentally urges Sam to elaborate.

But Sam, in true fashion, does exactly the opposite.

He asks more questions of the people around him.

And Dean cares–but only marginally.

Dean cares more about how Sam’s getting out of this. He cares about the details only as long they’re building bricks of a freaking escape plan.

Dean needs a plan.

The helplessness is starting to get to him. The answers he hears just prompt other questions, and they pile on, uncaring that Dean is immaterial, that he can’t intervene. He can’t ask. He can’t do. He can’t shoot, barge in, demand, try, try anything.

He’s tied by his hands and feet – alone, alone with his thoughts that scream at him, robbed of the carefully choreographed routine of action, responsibility, meaning.

He has no role in this.

So why the fuck is he here? Why like this? Just to see Sam–

But he can’t.

Not Sam.

Not now.

Not ever.

He can’t watch Sam hurting, dying again because he can’t do anything. 

Dean doesn’t even know when he leaves, when he hits the empty air, when the voices become breaths buried in the low murmur of the wind. Tears, cold against his cheeks, but Dean doesn’t feel them. He just walks, then runs, then tries to find something to hit in the endless, harrowing empty–but there’s nothing.  

There’s nothing except the way he feels.

The thing inside him, clawing its way out, iron scraping at his insides, burning, cold, mangling, angry screams.

And then just…quiet.

Time.

Trailing off, flame dying out, leaving…

Leaving Dean.

A broken cassette tape, stuck on the same note of the same song. Except, there’s no song, no music, only him and it’s too little, and it’s too much.

It’s a cell with no barriers.

The void seeps into him, old friend greeting Dean. The apathy melts against the layers of his mind like a warm blanket, and Dean welcomes it.

Dean forgets.

Where he’s coming from, where he’s going.

Dean loses the only thing he always had.

Even in threads, even in broken pieces, even in almost non-existent scraps.

Hope.

And with it, Sam.

~

“You’ve wandered off. You’ve left him.”

No, I haven’t, Dean wants to say. I’m here. I’m always with him.

But he doesn’t know whose voice it is, if it’s just his own, distorted, unfamiliar, whispering right back at him. And he doesn’t know the him he’s not abandoned.

A figure disturbs the nothingness, a shadowy form that wavers as Dean tries to focus on it.

“You can see me?”

“I do. I see you. And I heard everything.”

Heard –

“Listen, I don’t know what you think –“

But the ghost interrupts him.

“Do you feel him?”

Dean wants to ask – what? Feel what?

But he does. The light pull. Low, and uncertain.

He looks, scrutinizes the horizon, and sees figures in the distance. He didn’t realize he’d gone so far from the others.

“He feels it.”

“Who?” Dean asks.

“Think…remember.”

Remember what?

Confusion.

That’s all Dean has.

“Remember who is important to you.”

Like a drowning man frantic to breach the water for air, Dean remembers.

Sam.

“You’ve wondered into the Fields of Asphodel. The oblivion. And your brother feels it.”

Dean pulls at the fabric of his thoughts, lets his mind envelop the charted memories of his being. It’s massive effort, and he tries to focus on Sam, on the only lighthouse amidst an endless sea.

And then – then he’s suddenly back at the space inside the iron gate, standing next to his brother.

Sam has an absent look in his eyes, a slump to his shoulders, his hands, shaking the slightest bit.

“You’re tied to him,” the shadow says, marvel in his voice. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but you are. As he is to you.”

Dean opens his mouth to speak, but the flickering shape continues.

“You are here…and not here. The gods may not be able to judge you. But if you seek the Field on your own, it won’t matter. You will stay here anyway.”

Dean wonders why, what reason there is to it.

Sam can’t see him.

And yet, Dean can’t bring himself to leave him.

“But you did. You found the Fields.”

Dean feels the tug of the emptiness again.

The bare bones. Air.

Dean’s not a spirit , not invisible – not anymore.

Dean’s – nothing.

“Wrong. We’re souls. We’re everything.”

“And them? Sam? They aren’t Why don’t they see me?”

“They are. But they are also still people until the gods are through with them. Like they are with me. I am truly dead now. But you…you don’t belong here. There’s an important difference in that.”

“Doesn’t seem like it to me.”

“It would, if you stopped to think about it. You’re just…you’re thought. Feeling. A piece Sam’s been carrying with him. Me? I’ve spent too long here. Too long wandering. There isn’t anything left tying me to life…this place has stripped me of it, layer by layer.”

And Dean understands. He feels less every moment he spends here, he feels life draining out of him.

“These gods, my friend, they don’t kill you. They play. They play for however long a soul lasts—and then they throw the husk back to the material plane.”

Dean remembers.

The victims – they came back dead – all of them.

In different states.

After months, weeks, or years.

Now it starts to make sense.

It’s only now that Dean understands.

He looks at Sam again, head to toe, and he feels…

…he doesn’t know whether it’s nothing, or everything.

Dean closes his eyes.

He sinks into that feeling, lets it carry him.

~

Time doesn’t really pass. It just splits in threads that fuse together again.

The voices are an anchor in here, in something resembling motion, sound, activity, life.

“They had a funeral for you. With an empty casket. Because they know, don’t they? The whole town knows what happens to the people who suddenly go poof.”

Peony.

Cory, muttering something back.

“The books. Everyone knows not to write in the books.”

The old man is nowhere to be found.

“I thought you were joking…trying to impress me with one of your myths! I wouldn’t have...”

“But then you snuck back into the museum and wrote your name in the book after mine—why did you do that?”

“Because … because I felt guilty, you dumbass! Because I killed you!”

Sam, distraught look gone, intervenes before things get even more heated.

He directs his question to the teenage girl.

 “How did you get here?”

Before she answers she looks Sam over.

“You’re not from here.”

“I’m Sam. I’m sorry I haven’t introduced myself properly. I’m trying to figure out what happened to bring us here.”

“Right,” she says, still not convinced. “Well, fine. I’m Rayleigh. And, as to how I’m here – when your mom tells you that if you write your name down in any book anywhere in town, you’ll disappear and never come back, you’re supposed to believe it–just like that?”

The scene in front of Dean plays itself out like one from the movies–technicolor, with all the right sounds, but distant.

“Jesus – of course you are!” Cory interrupts Rayleigh’s conversation with Sam. “You’ve seen– “

But he stops.

Sam brings his right hand to his chest, touches the palm with his left thumb.

He looks surprised. And pained.

And then … everything goes black.

~

The darkness dissolves from the middle to the edges, slowly, turning into a small clearing. It’s astonishingly real–a real that feels right against Dean’s ethereal skin–beautiful, green, forest on one side, and blue, cloudless horizon stroking the ground on the other. Light forming halos around the tips of the impossibly tall trees, but no sun. Nothing, truly, like the world they’ve left behind–this is limited, edges visible with the naked eye, and missing the most important parts.

But it’s enough. Enough for Dean’s head to feel clearer. Not by much–some of his thoughts still slip through his grasp. But it’s better.

Sam seems to be himself. With a slight shake of his head, eyes focused, looking straight ahead.

Good thing, too, because in front of them, there are three men studying Sam, watching closely, waiting for him to realize where he is.

“Sam Winchester,” the one in the middle chair–no, Dean thinks, throne, more like it addresses his brother, eyes full of delight. “Welcome.”

First Charon, now this wrongly warm greeting–it’s like they’re throwing Sam a freaking welcome home party.

What the fuck.

Dean glares at the Greek gods.

He doesn’t like how they look a little too happy to see Sam.

“You will be a delightful challenge,” the same voice sounds out, resonating in the falsely earth-like space.

Sam doesn’t reply.

He’s standing tall–body taut, ready, and yet he looks so…small.

The men in front of him are not men. They’re human-shaped forms too large to be actually human, bodies that could be statues if they were stationary. They’re pictures in history books–togas, long hair, cruel expressions–and Sam…

Sam seems so fragile right now.

Sam is just bones, flesh that could so easily be ripped apart.

Dean shifts unconsciously, matches Sam’s stance. He doesn’t know if he could really help if they want to hurt Sam –but he’s sure as hell going to try.

“Minos–“

“Yes, Rhadamanthus. I am getting to it. Patience,” the god in the middle frowns at the interruption, turns toward his left. Then to Sam again. ”On your knees. It is more visually satisfying like that.”

Two things happen at once. Sam collapses in an awkward heap on his knees, in a way that looks completely against his will, and Dean moves–and not of his own accord, either.

He’s in between the huge marble thrones, a cold hand on his right bicep, gripping tight.

“You did not think we would fail to give you a front row seat.”

It’s a different voice–the third of them, and Dean is on the right side of Minos – which, if he listened to Sam explain it closely enough, means this is Aeacus.

“Let me go,” Dean snarls through his teeth.

“Oh, no, I do not think I will,” Aeacus says, calmly, features unchanged save for the sudden chill of his eyes. Power radiates in the way he speaks, sentences uttered like laws, firm and unmalleable.

Dean struggles in the strong grip.

But he’s still weak, the Asphodel Fields have left their mark on him, the way his mind sends signals to the rest of his body. It all seems just a fraction too slow, too little, too useless. Dean fights to not give in to the hopelessness weaving through him as Aeacus continues.

“Sam cannot see you…not right now, at least. He will, after a few more encounters like this. Regardless, I think this will be interesting. We have never had someone like this…a soul dragging another here. But that’s your brother for you, Dean, is it not? Always bringing you down with him.”

 “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you dick.”

Aeacus tilts his head. “We’ll see.”

Dean wants to say something more but Sam’s voice draws his attention to the middle of the clearing.

“So, what, now you torture me? Been there, done that,” he tells Minos, staring defiantly at the three Gods.

“It is a trial, Sam, I thought you understood that.”

“Why? You already know where you’re going to send me.”

Minos nods. “True, but it is immensely pleasing to show you exactly why.”

“Every decision you have ever made, Sam Winchester,” Rhadamanthus intones, “you will relive it. You will see the consequences of it. And by the end, you will know where you belong. Then, and only then, this will be finished, and you will leave.”

“Why?” Sam challenges. “Just so you can get a kick out of it?”

“Well, yes, of course,” Aeacus replies matter-of-factly. He shrugs, gesture slightly out of place on a god. “We need something to do, do we not? And since there are not many souls who pass our Gates anymore, we have found…alternate ways to keep busy.”

“Not many souls?” Dean asks without thinking.

“Heaven and Hell politics,” Minos explains without turning. He’s speaking loudly, loud enough that Sam can hear him. “Souls are not going where they were meant to anymore. They are just goods to be traded, uncounted sacrifices for individual purposes, or, simply numbers in armies. We maintained a fair deal in this world for centuries, only taking our share and nothing more. We, Greek Gods, renounced our supreme authority, in the name of peace! To live in a changing world, we were left with scraps the angels and demons and reapers left behind–and we accepted it.”

Sam looks like he wants to say something, but Minos continues.

“And then they took that away from us, too, revoking our agreement. Suddenly, it mattered too little what the life in the soul was…it mattered only as a chess piece in a grand game the powers were playing. Does that sound familiar? It should…you, Sam Winchester, you and your brother…you’re the perfect example. Heaven, Hell, you’ve been to them all.”

There’s a myriad of emotions crossing Sam’s face while the Greek god speaks.

“And that’s why you’ve taken all those people? For revenge? To prove you’re the higher authority after all?”

Indignation.

Trust Sam to go with the reaction guaranteed to piss the bad guys off.

Though.

He’s pretty sure he would have chosen the same one.

 “We all have a purpose, Sam. We cannot renounce that.”

“Even if it means kidnapping innocents? Taking someone who isn’t even dead? Aren’t you doing exactly what pissed you off? Interfering with fate for your gain?”

There’s a long moment of silence.

If Dean weren’t currently immaterial, and sadly a world away from a decent set of pom-poms, he would break out in a cheer and wave a sign with Go Sam.

“We have done what is needed to preserve our tradition,” Rhadamanthus finally responds.

“Yeah, what was that?” Dean asks under his breath. “Made a deal with a demon, probably.”

“A witch, actually,” Aeacus whispers too close to Dean for his liking. “She fell into our hands by accident, and offered a trade to provide us with entertainment in exchange for eternal life. She was very clever, put a spell on the books of just one little town. Write your name in one and win an instant trip to our little corner of heaven and hell. The creative part is the spell moves from book to book so you never know if you’re going to be chosen…or you’ve beaten fate.”

“Helen Kostoupolous,” Dean realizes.  

Rhadamanthus pulls Dean out of his thoughts, voice annoyingly bland, like he’s reading phone book sections at given intervals.

“We have talked enough. It is time.”

As soon as he says it, there’s a wheezing sound, and Dean feels a cold breeze.

Wind.

But…not really.

Wind in forms of shadows that build themselves from smoke and ash from the ground up. The same humming, same thrum that they heard in the beginning.

“Meet Grief, Sam. Anger. War. “

Sam had said something about that.

Well, at least there’s no chimeras.

Just freaky shadows that look like Dementors from Harry Potter.

See, Dean knows stuff.

He wishes he had a special memory drawer for profoundly useless stuff.

The shadow called out as War steps forward toward Sam.

Dean does, too, except his movement is stopped abruptly by the same hand on his arm, an insurmountable force that keeps him back.

“No!” Dean shouts, pointlessly, as is everything he’s done in this damned place.

But War…it touches Sam.

It touches, and Sam folds, falls, still on his knees, to his hands.

“You’ve always been a soldier, Sam,” Minos says, tone tinted with malicious content, “but it’s time you’ve seen the consequences. The deaths and the blood spilled. Everything you didn’t give a chance to be, as you’ve fought your own war–your own demons–and lost.”

Dean fights against the hold again.

He needs to get to Sam.

Before War touches his brother again.

But Sam is surrounded by ghosts, and Dean hears them calling to Sam…Azaezel, telling Sam he never had a choice, then offering the leadership of Hell’s Army.

He hears things that aren’t supposed to be his.

What could you have done, Sammy? Just think about it…if you had only embraced your role…how many people could you have saved? Including your brother, you could have saved him from Hell.

“Don’t listen, Sam!” Dean yells, but Sam doesn’t hear him.

“Sam.”

Ruby forms from the mist, goes to put her arms around Sam, but he pulls back and challenges blindly in the direction of the gods.

“Is that all you’ve got?” his brother, the idiot, yells defiantly. The only sign that this isn’t an actual walk in the park are the beads of sweat on his forehead.

“No,” Rhadamanthus says simply. “But it is the start.”

Dean doesn’t know if they spend minutes, hours, or days there, in the small clearing. And he can only stand there.

Watch as his brother fights memories with no chance.

Dean can do nothing–nothing. No matter how hard he tries.

This time, it doesn’t work on sheer will alone. It doesn’t matter how much Dean wants to go to Sam, the grip of Aeacus is still too strong, a binding of his bodiless form to the god’s hand. Dean’s still just a soul  and simple determination doesn’t change it.

And Sam…

Dean almost wishes this would be physical. That way, he could see the damage. He would know how much it hurt. What could and couldn’t heal. What would last. He would know how much is too much.

He shouts a few more times. Curses at the Greek so-called-gods, calls Sam’s name.

It gives him the impression he’s doing something while Sam is slowly tortured by memories in front of his eyes.

~

“Dude, you okay?”

Goth girl looms over Sam who is huddled against the iron fence.

Of course he’s freaking not.

“Rayleigh,” Cory chastises.

“What? Just because we’re in the freaking Underworld, I can’t ask someone if he’s fine?”

“I am,” Sam rasps out. “But we do need to talk about how we’re getting out of here.”

His brother looks around, searches for escape ideas.

Dean’s been looking, too.

“There is no way out,” Peony says hopelessly. “We’re dead. And our souls are going to rot here.”

Sam doesn’t say anything. Not immediately.

“There’s always a way,” he says finally, determination in his eyes. “I’ve learned that you don’t give up. Ever. So I don’t know how, but I’m getting back to my brother. And I’ll see that you get out of here with me.”

Dean doesn’t want to admit to the warmth that spreads in his chest at that.

I’m right here, Sam.

~

Sam walks.

Endlessly, or so it seems to Dean, who accompanies him.

He walks in every direction

They find nothing. Only the same background, and hope laid out in crumbs on each path.

~

The next called by the gods is Cory.

He takes it hard, returns with dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and trembling through his whole body for hours after.

“They like it this way,” he scrapes out, “Taking turns with each of us. We last longer. They say we concentrate on what it is shown to us…we feel it to its full extent.”

Those motherf—

“It’s okay,” Rayleigh says, and Dean doesn’t miss how she sneaks a hand over Cory’s. “We can fight it. Plus, crazy dude here says he’ll get us out.”

Sam just nods, lost in thought.

God, Sam chooses the worst moments to be nonverbal.

He’s never telling Sam to shut up. Never, ever again.

~

Rayleigh can do it.

She proves it when she comes back with bloody fingernail-shaped wounds in her palm and only a comment to sum it up.

“Six out of ten,” she shrugs. Ain’t that bad.”

~

Then it’s Sam’s turn again.

This time, it’s Fear, and Dean has a courtside seat to everything that ever terrified Sam, from clowns to his first kiss to their dad.

And Dean’s in there, too, in different forms, in different shapes, an immaterial, made-out-of-thought Dean that Sam built of wrong premises. It’s the Sam in the church, the one that asked Dean, do you know what I confessed in there?

How many times I’ve let you down.

Aeacus smiles at him when they’re done.

“I truly hope you enjoyed that.”

Dean wants to throw up.

~

Peony doesn’t come back.

They wait.

Pointlessly, endlessly.

Cory’s number is called in the middle of a sentence as he’s asking whether they can’t go back the same way they came, hand raised amidst a gesture, surprised look in his eyes.

Sam answers anyway.

No, we can’t. The Styx wouldn’t allow it…and, even if we made it, we don’t know if the door to reality where we came from works both ways.

~

“Agony, Winchester–that’s your fate,” Minos’ voice sounds out distantly.

Dean focuses on his brother.

For a moment a long, interminable second, it looks like Sam’s staring right back.

But then his brother closes his eyes again.

And Dean travels with him in that – he gets to see just how good of a bunk buddy Lucifer was. He slips in all the broken corners of Sam’s mind – all the ones that the Cage had burned off.

Dean watches as his brother is torn apart, limb by limb, thought by thought.

Sam.

Sam, come on. Up.

He does. He opens his eyes.

Tells the others he’s fine. He can take this. He’s strong.

~

“Sam?! Sam.”

Dean throws his hands up, exasperation in his voice and eyes.

“Can you see me? Sam!”

Sam’s looking straight at Dean.

He gives a tiny flinch, then looks away.

“Oh, come on! Sam, what the fuck?!”

Dean yells until his voice becomes nothing more than a croak.

~

“Do you know,” Rayleigh tells Sam, ”I wrote my name down on every piece of paper I could find?”

And Sam, thin, tired, exhausted, black circles under his eyes, even though here, there’s no notion of time –Sam tries.

“Why?”

She smiles sadly.

“Because I wanted to die.”

She lets her head fall, looks away in shame. Sam asks gently, “And now?”

“Now,” Rayleigh shrugs, “I’m really hoping you’re close to figuring it out.”

Sam looks at her, expression open, sincere.

“I am.”

Sincere, unless you are Dean, and have lived thirty-plus years with the guy, and know when he is talking out of his ass.

Sam has no clue what he’s going to do.

~

This time, Dean’s sure Sam sees him.

Right there, in the small clearing in front of the gods.

Sam sees Dean between the chairs, immobilized by the same strong hand.

Sam looks at him, eyebrows pinched together, confused, distant.

“I’m letting him see you,” Aeacus says. “But of course he thinks you are part of the illusion. If he only knew you were truly here, it would give him hope. But we can’t have that, can we?”

Dean doesn’t say anything.

He listens to Sam screaming.

Dean doesn’t know how much more he can take.

Sam’s strong.

But when the hits keep coming … when it’s Sam’s mind that’s under attack, when failsafe after failsafe is battered down in what already feels like a house of cards, it will eventually autodestruct.

~

Cory leaves them, pulled away and this time he doesn’t come back.

Rayleigh shuts down.

She cries.

She doesn’t want to be near Sam.

~

Sam begins talking to Dean.

Except he’s not, really. It’s more like he’s talking to an imaginary Dean in his mind, not realizing Dean really can hear him.

“Dean? What am I doing? What…how do I get out?”

Dean doesn’t respond.

He doesn’t have an answer.

~

“And now, Dean, for the grand finale,” Minos tells him as soon as they arrive.

It’s the first time Minos has addressed Dean directly. No more whispers, no more speeches directed at everyone and no one in particular.

“I have to say, I truly thought your brother would last longer.”

Dean’s heart starts pounding. He’s found some fucked up semblance of coping–existing within these circumstances. Seeing Sam hurt, time and time again, in front of his eyes, it’s become…normal. Normal in the most wrong of senses but it gives Dean the illusion that they have time.

That, no matter how bad it gets, they will figure it out.

They always have. An inch, seconds away from death, even dead–they always escape. They find a way. One of the Hail Marys works, and they’d live. Again.

“But first…let’s illuminate some mysteries for Sam.”

Sam holds Minos’ gaze. He’s on his knees, like that first time, but this time, it isn’t against his will, it’s simply because his legs won’t hold him up.

“Sam, you have talked to your brother during your time here, thinking you were imagining him. You should have believed in him more.” Minos pushes Dean in front, no longer under Aeacus grasp. “He has been here all along.”

“What?”

Dean cannot bear the stricken look on Sam’s face.

“I thought–“

“Sam–“

“God, I –“

Bursts of sound and unfinished thoughts.

“God has nothing to do with this, Sammy. And B) we’re getting out.”

Aeacus laughs.

“So you keep saying.”

“You–“ Dean starts, turning towards the god.

But Rhadamanthus thunders from his chair, “Enough.”

Dean’s head whips in the other direction, stopping at the sight of his brother slowly rising, staring at Dean.

Searching.

What are you thinking, Sam?

“Cerberus,” Rhadamanthus speaks again. “Come.”

“Not yet,“ Minos protests.

But Rhadamanthus shakes his head.

“I have been patient enough. Now.”

He snaps his fingers, and a long shadow stretches on the ground, almost reaching Sam. But it’s not merely a shadow this time–it belongs to a body, a huge dog the size of a freaking dragon.

And yep, a whole shitload of heads.

Dean gets into fighting position.

“That will be of no help, Dean Winchester. It is not you our pet seeks.”

Pet, Dean’s ass.

But it’s true–it’s not coming towards Dean. It’s going towards Sam–and the idiot just stands there, expression blank.

“Sam, run!”

 It’s like Sam has lost all ability to process his surroundings.

“Sam!“

His brother shakes himself, squares his shoulders.

“Dean–I’ve got it.”

Firm. Sure of himself.

“Got what?!”

But Dean doesn’t hear Sam’s reply, if there is one.

The ground splits before Sam with a loud crack and a stutter of time and space.

Beyond a brief loss of balance, Sam seems unfazed.

Cerberus moves closer, growling threateningly, breathing loudly through all fifty of its heads.

“Sam!” Dean yells, for the thousandth time.

He runs toward his brother.

He knows what’s going to happen.

“Behold your fate–Tartarus, Sam Winchester,” Rhadamanthus’ voice is a thunderclap of power. Dean had thought Rhadamanthus was just bored with his brothers’ way of passing time with their victims.

But no, he had been waiting for this, for the last act.

Then, before Dean ever gets close to Sam, Sam falls.

A little bit at a time, sole of his feet catching only half of the slowly vanishing ground. Then his body slips into the expanding fissure–then there are just his hands, grasping the rock in the last hope of life. He’s trying to find a hold, looking desperately around, at Dean, at the menacing heads of the enormous dog–

Dean’s there.

Right there.

He clutches at Sam’s wrist.

Maybe this time…

But Dean’s fingers go through flesh and bone like it’s nothing. The only thing it does is draw Sam’s attention to Dean’s immaterial hand.

Sam looks up.

“Dean– “

Dean meets his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

For what?

But he doesn’t get to voice it out loud.

A second at a standstill–Sam’s eyes, tear-filled–and then–

He falls.

Sam’s body goes limp, and he slides down, down–

“NO!”

And Dean feels–

Maybe this is where his journey begins–maybe this is when he meets the shadows himself.

He fastens every part of himself to Sam hurtling into the pit—

Everything fades, edges black out, his heart is ripping from his chest, Sam’s name is pulled from his lips—

Dean does the only thing he can. He closes his eyes.

~

He wakes up in a forest.

On the ground between the trees, branches clouding his vision of the sky.

He blinks.

One, two, three times.

He’s alive.

There’s no mistaking the chronic pain in his right knee,  the dryness of a mouth parched for water, or the way it feels like an elephant herd has chosen to march on his chest.

He remembers.

“Sam?!”

And even though, deep down, it’s just a reflex, and not conscious thought, because, consciously, if he stopped to think about it, Dean would have no business waiting for a response –

“Yeah.”

Slow, drawn out, sigil to the air around.

Close.

Sam’s there, back against a tree, looking incredibly disoriented…

But alive.

“What–“

“Rayleigh. I got her.”

 Dean stands up, pulls Sam to his feet,  looks him over. Battered and bruised, slump in his shoulders and mopey eyes, but…

Sam.

~

Sam frees Rayleigh’s soul right there, at the edge of a small forest on the margin of Bedford, Virginia.

It’s a bright flare against the blue canvas of the sky–Dean remembers doing this for Bobby and he stares for interminable seconds as Rayleigh ascends.

“She’ll find her way,” Sam says quietly, a resolution and a promise all in one.

~

They find the Impala in the motel parking lot.

The radio informs them that only six days have passed.

It seemed like a lifetime.

~

It’s a transition, back to functional again.

Dean finds himself standing in the room doorway a moment too long, watching Sam,  making sure that he’s not disappearing again.

He follows Sam’s fingers on the map still in their hotel room, tracing all the locations of the known spell-bound papers based on the past disappearances.

They burn everything, every last shred of suspicious paper. Unfortunately the witch, Helen, is long gone.

They find bodies, too—Cory, Peony, Rayleigh, and an older schoolteacher.

Sam doesn’t say much.

Dean waits.

He’s learned to do that.

~

The ride back home feels familiar–not in the stretches of the road, but in the unshakeable feeling of it being right, just them and the rumble of the Impala.

“Sam?” Dean asks, four hours in, when the silence becomes too much.

And Sam knows even before Dean finishes speaking.

“I figured half of your soul was back in the real world…and it couldn’t leave. ”

“You – wait, but that would mean –“

Sam smiles tiredly. “Pretty big bet, huh?”

That Dean had the same ties to Sam as Sam had to Dean?

Not really.

That Dean could do it?

Maybe.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam,” is what Dean eventually says. “What if it didn’t work?”

Sam shrugs, glances sideways at his brother.

“What if I – “Dean doesn’t know how to continue. He says, quietly, afraid to admit, “I almost couldn’t do it, Sam. I almost lost myself down there…”

“But you didn’t. You were…you were with me, Dean.”

Yeah, for too long – for seeing too much of who Sam is.

The premise of this working is not looking too deep.

So Dean, even though the question is etched into his thoughts, doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t ask why Sam hadn’t believed in the illusion that was Dean.

“Sam…” Dean starts.

He’s not yet decided what he wants to say, but Sam proves he’s got some mind reading stuff going on, too, because he says,

“Dude, I thought we weren’t doing the chick flick stuff.”

Dean, despite assiduous searching, finds zero smartass replies.

So he just drives.

He drives, and, somewhere along the road, he’s thankful that he’s here, now.