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phantismaFandom: Supernatural, Keeper!Verse
Title: Losing Sam, Arc 3.5 (All Keeper Verse Here, including Arcs 1 & 2)
Rating: R
Word Count: 37,625 (total arc)
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean (long term established wincest), John, Dana (Dean's daughter) Missouri, OFC & OMC
Summary: John sets up camp, Dean tries to clean up his act, then falls even further...Sam gurgles...
A/Ns & Warnings: This story pics up after arc 2 as written by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shotofjack. It would never have happened without her. From the original concept to her beta, this fic owes a good amount to her. Expect a chapter a day until it is finished.
John followed the directions Dana had given him, ended up driving past the retreat and a few miles down the road to the campground shortly before dark. He wanted to explore, see how close he could get, test the protections Missouri had said were in place, but first things first.
He needed to set up camp. The tent was bigger than he needed, something Dean had bought years before when he was still insistent on the whole family vacation thing, big enough for three adults to sleep comfortably. He set it up and filled it with his cot, because he wasn’t a young man anymore and the thought of more than one night on the ground made him hurt, and went about making a fire.
It would be morning before it was safe to wander around. He set some soup to warm by the fire and broke out his kit. He walked a circle around his camp, salting the ground, then blessing it with holy water, murmuring an incantation as he went.
Maybe he wouldn’t be as secure as Sam, but he’d be safe enough for the night.
He was aware of warmth, gentle touches. He was on his back, his eyes closed. He was safe. The part of him that recognized these things was distant, not a part of what was happening.
There was nothing in the vast open space, no memories, no fears…there was only safe and warm and the silvery blob…it rippled, caressed by unseen hands and it washed through him…healing. His body was flushed with it, the physical pain a distant ache that was fading.
Rest Samuel…sleep and let us work.
He knew the voice, knew and couldn’t place it…but he obeyed, slipping back into the womb-like safety of the warm place and letting go again.
Dean woke up, and wished he hadn’t. He was face down on the couch, or his face and chest were. His feet were on the floor. He was stiff, sore, hungover. After Dana had left, he’d dug out the tequila. The bottle was still in his left hand.
He groaned and tried to move, only succeeding in crashing the rest of the way to the floor. Aristotle lifted her head and looked at him. Remmy bounced over to lick his face. “Too old for this shit.”
He managed to pull himself upright and staggered out to the kitchen, dropping the bottle in the trash and reaching into the fridge for a bottle of water. He stumbled up the stairs and found aspirin, then crashed into the bed. Maybe if he tried to sleep he’d feel better.
He pulled Sam’s pillow to him, hugging it and breathing in the smell of Sam. At least until the pills and water hit his stomach, then he was up and lurching for the bathroom.
Three hours later he pulled himself up off the tile floor and showered. His head was pounding…his stomach was queasy, but he was vertical. He wiped the steam from the mirror and sighed.
He looked like shit. His eyes were sunken deep and dark. He’d lost a lot of weight. He hadn’t shaved since Sam left. He picked up his razor, then shook his head. Maybe he’d let it be…grow it out…at least until Sam came home to him.
Remmy peeked his head into the bathroom, whining. “Shit, you probably need to go out, don’t you buddy?” Dean scooped him up and headed for the back door. Aristotle joined them as he opened the door. She ran out, circling the yard and sniffing, peering into one hole after another.
Dean put the puppy down, watching him run out and squat, peeing with a look on his face that said it was heaven to do it.
Aristotle tended to her own business, then resumed circling the yard. She sat on the spot where they’d found Sam, her eyes coming back to Dean. “I miss him too.” Dean said softly.
The yard was a disaster. Dean sighed. Cleaning it up would give him something to do, and the dogs some time outside. “Keep an eye on Remmy, Aristotle.” He left Remmy running madly around the yard with Aristotle watching and went to get some tools from the garage.
John groaned and rolled off the cot to his feet. The tent was toasty, the small heater warming the space quite well. It was cold out there. He shoved his foot into his boots and stumbled out to take a morning pee and start some coffee.
There’d been a time when he’d have scoffed at the camp stove sitting on the tailgate of his truck, or the generator sitting in the bed or the heater in the tent. He got his coffee started and looked around him. Bobby’d probably laugh at him and crack wise about old age.
The mighty John Winchester, reduced to relying on gadgets.
“Fuck him.” John said out loud. He was nearly fucking sixty-five years old. He’d earned the cot and the heater. Hell, he had earned a five star hotel, not a camp site.
Yet, the woods were quiet, peaceful, an excellent place for a retreat…if you were into that sort of thing. He could hear the stream nearby. There was probably good fishing to be had somewhere in the neighborhood.
He unfolded a chair and sat, cradling a cup of coffee to him. He’d have some breakfast and then go scouting out this protected space. Test it.
He nodded to himself. Sam would be safe. One way or another.
Samuel.
He rose to the voice, reaching for it. He was surrounded by warmth, by family. Mom and Daddy and Brother.
There was more structure now. There were walls and soft, squishy places. There were memories. Voices and pictures. Mom in her nightgown. Daddy smelling like oil. Brother with soft hands.
Samuel, it is time to move forward.
He didn’t want to move anywhere. He wanted to hold on to this…to stay here where he had them, where they all held him and loved him. He was pulled. His little hands couldn’t hold him there.
He cried.
Samuel.
He opened his eyes. She smiled at him, touched his face. “You need to eat. Then you may go back within.”
His hands didn’t move. She lifted a spoon. “Open.” His mouth opened and she deposited a spoon full of something warm and mushy. He swallowed. His cheeks were wet from crying. His body felt heavy. She wasn’t his Mom. He knew her though. Trusted her. She fed him until it was gone, wiped his mouth and held a sippy cup to his lips.
When he’d swallowed the milk, she helped him lay back down, smoothing a hand over his face. “Sleep now Samuel. We will begin again in a few hours.”
Dean had filled in most of the holes and was filling the gas tank on the mower when he caught Aristotle growling at a hole near what was once the hedge. He put down the gas can and crossed the yard. Remmy raced ahead of him, his nose following Ari’s until she nipped at him.
Remmy squealed and backed away, then barked at Aristotle. She looked at Dean, then scratched at the hole.
“Whatcha got Ari?” Dean asked, moving close enough to squat and reach into the hole. He stopped before he actually touched the dirt. Ari’s teeth were bared and she growled at it…whatever it was. All Dean could see was ash and dirt.
He got up and went for the shovel. Ari was still growling at the hole, with Remmy barking at it, then at her, then looking to Dean for approval. Dean poked the shovel into the hole, and hit something squishy. He pulled it up and dumped it on the grass beside the hole.
Aristotle jumped back, barking and whining. She nipped at Remmy when he tried to sniff at whatever it was. Dean squatted down and looked at it. The smell was atrocious. He pulled out his pocket knife and used it to scrape the dirt off of it so he could get a look.
It was…flesh, of a sort. Rotted flesh.
“Is this what hurt Sam, Ari?” It reeked of sulfur and something baser, rotten. Dean went for the hose, washing the dirt off it. “The question is, what is it, exactly?”
He poked at it with his knife, then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “It stinks, eh, Remmy?”
Remmy renewed his barking in response. “Maybe this can help me find the son of a bitch.”
He went to the garage and came back with a garbage bag, dumping the hunk of stinking, rotting flesh into the bag and bundling it up. He remembered seeing something when helping Sam research something a year before, something about a summoning or a finding spell…that could take a piece of the flesh of a thing and show you where to find the something it fell off of.
Dean shoved the garbage bag into the refrigerator hoping it wouldn’t rot away completely while he figured out what he needed and headed up the stairs, into Sam’s little used bedroom and the closet where he hid the most serious books, the ones they didn’t want Sam to admit he owned.
Aristotle jumped up on the bed, watching with what Dean could only guess was disapproval as he hauled the trunk out and started digging. He grabbed four or five that might be what he was looking for and settled on the floor to page through them.
He discarded the first one because it was in Latin, the one he wanted was in English. An hour later, he dumped those books into a pile and grabbed a bunch more.
“Gotcha.” He jumped up, noticing that the room had gotten dim and glancing at the clock. He’d dug through most of the trunk. The book had been near the bottom, with the darkest of the dark. He stepped over the piles of books and headed downstairs.
Dean pulled the bucket of chicken out of the fridge along with a bottle of water. He settled at the kitchen table with the book and his cold meal. He read through the spell. It wasn’t simple. He didn’t have half the things he needed. With a chicken leg sticking out of his mouth, Dean went to grab the shopping list pad off the fridge along with the magnet pen, scribbled down the list of things he needed.
If he hurried, he could get to the occult store before they closed.
John discovered the first of the barriers without a lot of effort, marked off the boundaries. He passed through it fairly easily. The entire area felt peaceful, comforting.
By late afternoon he’d found himself wandering in circles. Obviously there was a distraction spell or something similar.
He made his way back to camp. His senses told him he wasn’t alone, but he couldn’t quite identify anyone. Not until he came around his tent. There, in his camp, sitting on his chair, was a woman.
She was slight of build, bald, delicate features. Her blue robes were vaguely Buddhist in style. She smiled at him, despite the gun in his hands. “Good evening, Mr. Winchester. I am Ally.”
John lowered his gun, but not his guard, stepping cautiously toward her. She’d started a small fire. “I mean you no harm, I promise.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have come to request that you to let us work with Samuel without interference.”
“I am not here to interfere.” John said, putting his gun in his pocket. “Just want to make sure my boy is safe.”
She smiled again, inclining her head. “Your boy is both safe, and hardly a boy.”
“Never got the chance to be my boy. But he means the world to me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “His love for his family is strong.”
John nodded. He didn’t know why but he wanted to tell her things he didn’t even tell Dean…or Sam.
“He was taken from you.” It was a simple statement, but it cut through and he sat down hard on the fallen log near the fire.
“He was six months old. I thought he was dead. I never even looked for him.”
“Samuel has lived a difficult life.”
John nodded. Difficult was a polite word. “I lost his mother the same day. He was raised by…evil.”
“He is no angel himself.”
No. Sam was no angel. “He is a good man.”
She cocked her head. “We shall see the truth of that soon enough.”
“How is he?”
“Samuel is healing. We have segmented his mind to allow the physical healing to take place faster. The mental and emotional healing will take longer.”
“Segmented?”
“We have parted off his memory from his physical being. We have made a space for him to grow up again, as he should have, with his gifts as part of him. He is, essentially two people. When he has healed and grown he will become again one.”
John shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Right now, Samuel is as an infant, perhaps a toddler. We have locked away his memories and his gifts to allow him to be this child. We will progress him a little at a time, release his mind and his powers as they would have been as he grew. We will see who he is when it is done.”
“He’s a baby?”
She inclined her head again. “In a manner of speaking. He has the body of a man, but the mind of a child.”
John was decidedly uncomfortable with that idea…that Sam…as mammoth as Sam was, could be reduced to infancy. “Can I see him?”
“That would not be wise.” She stood, folding her hands. “I must return, he will need to be roused and fed shortly.” She closed her eyes briefly and everything stilled around them. “I am most impressed with your wards, Mr. Winchester. I have augmented them. No harm will come while you sojourn here.”
“I want to help.” John said as she stepped over his outer boundaries.
She looked at him. “Perhaps when he has progressed. It might offer him some comfort on the journey.”
“He didn’t get to be a kid the first time around.”
Again, she inclined her head. “I am aware. I will return in a few days. We will talk more.”
“I’ll…be here...”
Dean slammed into the house and dropped his bag on the kitchen table. He wanted a beer, but even he knew better than to mess with magic, particularly dark shit, with alcohol in his system. It would be bad enough sober.
He held no delusions about what he was about to do. It was going to cost him, one way or another. But, it would lead him to the fuck that hurt Sam.
It was a no brainer.
Dean locked the doors, went to Sam’s bedroom to gather the few things he needed, then retreated into their bedroom. It took him more than an hour to clear the floor space and remove anything that could hurt him if things went bad.
Another hour was spent chalking out the symbols on the floor. He took his time and moved slowly through each complex set. Next, he sprinkled the herbs around the space and crushed some into the cast iron cauldron set in the center of his circle.
It was nearly midnight before he was actually ready to begin. Remmy was whining outside the door. Dean ignored him and dumped the rotten hunk of flesh into the caldron amid the herbs. The stink in the room doubled. He checked his set up.
The compendium of supernatural beings, which Sam had a big ass name for, was open to the middle to the right of the cauldron. The spell book was on the left. Candles marked the circle at the ordinal points. Parchment and ink lay by the compendium.
If he did this right, and whatever the fuck this thing was actually was in the compendium, it should open to the page, the entry marked with a burn mark, and a location should appear…with any luck on the parchment. The book wasn’t real specific about that part.
Dean settled down on the floor inside his circle of symbols. He heaved a heavy breath and lifted the knife. It was one of Sam’s, a richly carved blade, sharp and deadly. He licked his lips and inhaled, his eyes falling on the spell book. The incantation was in a language he didn’t recognize…similar to Latin, but not quite the same. He spoke the first words carefully.
The room chilled. Dean held his bared arm over the cauldron and moved into the next part of the incantation. It was harder, like he was pushing the words out of his mouth. He drew the blade over his arm, cutting deep enough that blood flowed freely into the cauldron. He finished the words and added the remaining herbs, finishing with a large piece of bloodstone.
The entire cauldron started to smolder, foul smelling smoke filling the room, making him cough. Remmy and Aristotle were both barking outside the bedroom door. Sparks rose up in front of him and a wind blew through the room. Both books got pushed around in the wind, pages rustling and turning.
There was a bright flash of light, then searing pain. Dean grabbed at his uncut arm, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal words being scrawled into his skin. Dean yelled as some invisible hand carved into him and blood welled up, obscuring the message. There was a bang and then silence…everything stilled. Even the dogs were silent.
Dean staggered to his feet and into the bathroom to wash and bandage his wounds. He concentrated on the left hand first, the one he’d cut. Got the bleeding stopped and a bandage wound around it. Then he moved to his right arm. He washed it and patted it dry with gauze.
Cedar St.
Lexington
Nebraska.
His head was pounding and his stomach was threatening to explode. He staggered back out to the book, the compendium. It was open to a page that made little sense. He picked it up.
“No fucking way.”
A wave of dizziness hit him and he staggered to the bed. He dropped the book as it hit again. It was hitting him faster than he expected. He fell to the bed, rolling to bury his face in his pillow as the little bit of light in the room lanced through him. The wounds in his arms throbbed and he groaned, wishing it would just pull him under all ready.
Title: Losing Sam, Arc 3.5 (All Keeper Verse Here, including Arcs 1 & 2)
Rating: R
Word Count: 37,625 (total arc)
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean (long term established wincest), John, Dana (Dean's daughter) Missouri, OFC & OMC
Summary: John sets up camp, Dean tries to clean up his act, then falls even further...Sam gurgles...
A/Ns & Warnings: This story pics up after arc 2 as written by
shotofjack. It would never have happened without her. From the original concept to her beta, this fic owes a good amount to her. Expect a chapter a day until it is finished.John followed the directions Dana had given him, ended up driving past the retreat and a few miles down the road to the campground shortly before dark. He wanted to explore, see how close he could get, test the protections Missouri had said were in place, but first things first.
He needed to set up camp. The tent was bigger than he needed, something Dean had bought years before when he was still insistent on the whole family vacation thing, big enough for three adults to sleep comfortably. He set it up and filled it with his cot, because he wasn’t a young man anymore and the thought of more than one night on the ground made him hurt, and went about making a fire.
It would be morning before it was safe to wander around. He set some soup to warm by the fire and broke out his kit. He walked a circle around his camp, salting the ground, then blessing it with holy water, murmuring an incantation as he went.
Maybe he wouldn’t be as secure as Sam, but he’d be safe enough for the night.
He was aware of warmth, gentle touches. He was on his back, his eyes closed. He was safe. The part of him that recognized these things was distant, not a part of what was happening.
There was nothing in the vast open space, no memories, no fears…there was only safe and warm and the silvery blob…it rippled, caressed by unseen hands and it washed through him…healing. His body was flushed with it, the physical pain a distant ache that was fading.
Rest Samuel…sleep and let us work.
He knew the voice, knew and couldn’t place it…but he obeyed, slipping back into the womb-like safety of the warm place and letting go again.
Dean woke up, and wished he hadn’t. He was face down on the couch, or his face and chest were. His feet were on the floor. He was stiff, sore, hungover. After Dana had left, he’d dug out the tequila. The bottle was still in his left hand.
He groaned and tried to move, only succeeding in crashing the rest of the way to the floor. Aristotle lifted her head and looked at him. Remmy bounced over to lick his face. “Too old for this shit.”
He managed to pull himself upright and staggered out to the kitchen, dropping the bottle in the trash and reaching into the fridge for a bottle of water. He stumbled up the stairs and found aspirin, then crashed into the bed. Maybe if he tried to sleep he’d feel better.
He pulled Sam’s pillow to him, hugging it and breathing in the smell of Sam. At least until the pills and water hit his stomach, then he was up and lurching for the bathroom.
Three hours later he pulled himself up off the tile floor and showered. His head was pounding…his stomach was queasy, but he was vertical. He wiped the steam from the mirror and sighed.
He looked like shit. His eyes were sunken deep and dark. He’d lost a lot of weight. He hadn’t shaved since Sam left. He picked up his razor, then shook his head. Maybe he’d let it be…grow it out…at least until Sam came home to him.
Remmy peeked his head into the bathroom, whining. “Shit, you probably need to go out, don’t you buddy?” Dean scooped him up and headed for the back door. Aristotle joined them as he opened the door. She ran out, circling the yard and sniffing, peering into one hole after another.
Dean put the puppy down, watching him run out and squat, peeing with a look on his face that said it was heaven to do it.
Aristotle tended to her own business, then resumed circling the yard. She sat on the spot where they’d found Sam, her eyes coming back to Dean. “I miss him too.” Dean said softly.
The yard was a disaster. Dean sighed. Cleaning it up would give him something to do, and the dogs some time outside. “Keep an eye on Remmy, Aristotle.” He left Remmy running madly around the yard with Aristotle watching and went to get some tools from the garage.
John groaned and rolled off the cot to his feet. The tent was toasty, the small heater warming the space quite well. It was cold out there. He shoved his foot into his boots and stumbled out to take a morning pee and start some coffee.
There’d been a time when he’d have scoffed at the camp stove sitting on the tailgate of his truck, or the generator sitting in the bed or the heater in the tent. He got his coffee started and looked around him. Bobby’d probably laugh at him and crack wise about old age.
The mighty John Winchester, reduced to relying on gadgets.
“Fuck him.” John said out loud. He was nearly fucking sixty-five years old. He’d earned the cot and the heater. Hell, he had earned a five star hotel, not a camp site.
Yet, the woods were quiet, peaceful, an excellent place for a retreat…if you were into that sort of thing. He could hear the stream nearby. There was probably good fishing to be had somewhere in the neighborhood.
He unfolded a chair and sat, cradling a cup of coffee to him. He’d have some breakfast and then go scouting out this protected space. Test it.
He nodded to himself. Sam would be safe. One way or another.
Samuel.
He rose to the voice, reaching for it. He was surrounded by warmth, by family. Mom and Daddy and Brother.
There was more structure now. There were walls and soft, squishy places. There were memories. Voices and pictures. Mom in her nightgown. Daddy smelling like oil. Brother with soft hands.
Samuel, it is time to move forward.
He didn’t want to move anywhere. He wanted to hold on to this…to stay here where he had them, where they all held him and loved him. He was pulled. His little hands couldn’t hold him there.
He cried.
Samuel.
He opened his eyes. She smiled at him, touched his face. “You need to eat. Then you may go back within.”
His hands didn’t move. She lifted a spoon. “Open.” His mouth opened and she deposited a spoon full of something warm and mushy. He swallowed. His cheeks were wet from crying. His body felt heavy. She wasn’t his Mom. He knew her though. Trusted her. She fed him until it was gone, wiped his mouth and held a sippy cup to his lips.
When he’d swallowed the milk, she helped him lay back down, smoothing a hand over his face. “Sleep now Samuel. We will begin again in a few hours.”
Dean had filled in most of the holes and was filling the gas tank on the mower when he caught Aristotle growling at a hole near what was once the hedge. He put down the gas can and crossed the yard. Remmy raced ahead of him, his nose following Ari’s until she nipped at him.
Remmy squealed and backed away, then barked at Aristotle. She looked at Dean, then scratched at the hole.
“Whatcha got Ari?” Dean asked, moving close enough to squat and reach into the hole. He stopped before he actually touched the dirt. Ari’s teeth were bared and she growled at it…whatever it was. All Dean could see was ash and dirt.
He got up and went for the shovel. Ari was still growling at the hole, with Remmy barking at it, then at her, then looking to Dean for approval. Dean poked the shovel into the hole, and hit something squishy. He pulled it up and dumped it on the grass beside the hole.
Aristotle jumped back, barking and whining. She nipped at Remmy when he tried to sniff at whatever it was. Dean squatted down and looked at it. The smell was atrocious. He pulled out his pocket knife and used it to scrape the dirt off of it so he could get a look.
It was…flesh, of a sort. Rotted flesh.
“Is this what hurt Sam, Ari?” It reeked of sulfur and something baser, rotten. Dean went for the hose, washing the dirt off it. “The question is, what is it, exactly?”
He poked at it with his knife, then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “It stinks, eh, Remmy?”
Remmy renewed his barking in response. “Maybe this can help me find the son of a bitch.”
He went to the garage and came back with a garbage bag, dumping the hunk of stinking, rotting flesh into the bag and bundling it up. He remembered seeing something when helping Sam research something a year before, something about a summoning or a finding spell…that could take a piece of the flesh of a thing and show you where to find the something it fell off of.
Dean shoved the garbage bag into the refrigerator hoping it wouldn’t rot away completely while he figured out what he needed and headed up the stairs, into Sam’s little used bedroom and the closet where he hid the most serious books, the ones they didn’t want Sam to admit he owned.
Aristotle jumped up on the bed, watching with what Dean could only guess was disapproval as he hauled the trunk out and started digging. He grabbed four or five that might be what he was looking for and settled on the floor to page through them.
He discarded the first one because it was in Latin, the one he wanted was in English. An hour later, he dumped those books into a pile and grabbed a bunch more.
“Gotcha.” He jumped up, noticing that the room had gotten dim and glancing at the clock. He’d dug through most of the trunk. The book had been near the bottom, with the darkest of the dark. He stepped over the piles of books and headed downstairs.
Dean pulled the bucket of chicken out of the fridge along with a bottle of water. He settled at the kitchen table with the book and his cold meal. He read through the spell. It wasn’t simple. He didn’t have half the things he needed. With a chicken leg sticking out of his mouth, Dean went to grab the shopping list pad off the fridge along with the magnet pen, scribbled down the list of things he needed.
If he hurried, he could get to the occult store before they closed.
John discovered the first of the barriers without a lot of effort, marked off the boundaries. He passed through it fairly easily. The entire area felt peaceful, comforting.
By late afternoon he’d found himself wandering in circles. Obviously there was a distraction spell or something similar.
He made his way back to camp. His senses told him he wasn’t alone, but he couldn’t quite identify anyone. Not until he came around his tent. There, in his camp, sitting on his chair, was a woman.
She was slight of build, bald, delicate features. Her blue robes were vaguely Buddhist in style. She smiled at him, despite the gun in his hands. “Good evening, Mr. Winchester. I am Ally.”
John lowered his gun, but not his guard, stepping cautiously toward her. She’d started a small fire. “I mean you no harm, I promise.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have come to request that you to let us work with Samuel without interference.”
“I am not here to interfere.” John said, putting his gun in his pocket. “Just want to make sure my boy is safe.”
She smiled again, inclining her head. “Your boy is both safe, and hardly a boy.”
“Never got the chance to be my boy. But he means the world to me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “His love for his family is strong.”
John nodded. He didn’t know why but he wanted to tell her things he didn’t even tell Dean…or Sam.
“He was taken from you.” It was a simple statement, but it cut through and he sat down hard on the fallen log near the fire.
“He was six months old. I thought he was dead. I never even looked for him.”
“Samuel has lived a difficult life.”
John nodded. Difficult was a polite word. “I lost his mother the same day. He was raised by…evil.”
“He is no angel himself.”
No. Sam was no angel. “He is a good man.”
She cocked her head. “We shall see the truth of that soon enough.”
“How is he?”
“Samuel is healing. We have segmented his mind to allow the physical healing to take place faster. The mental and emotional healing will take longer.”
“Segmented?”
“We have parted off his memory from his physical being. We have made a space for him to grow up again, as he should have, with his gifts as part of him. He is, essentially two people. When he has healed and grown he will become again one.”
John shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Right now, Samuel is as an infant, perhaps a toddler. We have locked away his memories and his gifts to allow him to be this child. We will progress him a little at a time, release his mind and his powers as they would have been as he grew. We will see who he is when it is done.”
“He’s a baby?”
She inclined her head again. “In a manner of speaking. He has the body of a man, but the mind of a child.”
John was decidedly uncomfortable with that idea…that Sam…as mammoth as Sam was, could be reduced to infancy. “Can I see him?”
“That would not be wise.” She stood, folding her hands. “I must return, he will need to be roused and fed shortly.” She closed her eyes briefly and everything stilled around them. “I am most impressed with your wards, Mr. Winchester. I have augmented them. No harm will come while you sojourn here.”
“I want to help.” John said as she stepped over his outer boundaries.
She looked at him. “Perhaps when he has progressed. It might offer him some comfort on the journey.”
“He didn’t get to be a kid the first time around.”
Again, she inclined her head. “I am aware. I will return in a few days. We will talk more.”
“I’ll…be here...”
Dean slammed into the house and dropped his bag on the kitchen table. He wanted a beer, but even he knew better than to mess with magic, particularly dark shit, with alcohol in his system. It would be bad enough sober.
He held no delusions about what he was about to do. It was going to cost him, one way or another. But, it would lead him to the fuck that hurt Sam.
It was a no brainer.
Dean locked the doors, went to Sam’s bedroom to gather the few things he needed, then retreated into their bedroom. It took him more than an hour to clear the floor space and remove anything that could hurt him if things went bad.
Another hour was spent chalking out the symbols on the floor. He took his time and moved slowly through each complex set. Next, he sprinkled the herbs around the space and crushed some into the cast iron cauldron set in the center of his circle.
It was nearly midnight before he was actually ready to begin. Remmy was whining outside the door. Dean ignored him and dumped the rotten hunk of flesh into the caldron amid the herbs. The stink in the room doubled. He checked his set up.
The compendium of supernatural beings, which Sam had a big ass name for, was open to the middle to the right of the cauldron. The spell book was on the left. Candles marked the circle at the ordinal points. Parchment and ink lay by the compendium.
If he did this right, and whatever the fuck this thing was actually was in the compendium, it should open to the page, the entry marked with a burn mark, and a location should appear…with any luck on the parchment. The book wasn’t real specific about that part.
Dean settled down on the floor inside his circle of symbols. He heaved a heavy breath and lifted the knife. It was one of Sam’s, a richly carved blade, sharp and deadly. He licked his lips and inhaled, his eyes falling on the spell book. The incantation was in a language he didn’t recognize…similar to Latin, but not quite the same. He spoke the first words carefully.
The room chilled. Dean held his bared arm over the cauldron and moved into the next part of the incantation. It was harder, like he was pushing the words out of his mouth. He drew the blade over his arm, cutting deep enough that blood flowed freely into the cauldron. He finished the words and added the remaining herbs, finishing with a large piece of bloodstone.
The entire cauldron started to smolder, foul smelling smoke filling the room, making him cough. Remmy and Aristotle were both barking outside the bedroom door. Sparks rose up in front of him and a wind blew through the room. Both books got pushed around in the wind, pages rustling and turning.
There was a bright flash of light, then searing pain. Dean grabbed at his uncut arm, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal words being scrawled into his skin. Dean yelled as some invisible hand carved into him and blood welled up, obscuring the message. There was a bang and then silence…everything stilled. Even the dogs were silent.
Dean staggered to his feet and into the bathroom to wash and bandage his wounds. He concentrated on the left hand first, the one he’d cut. Got the bleeding stopped and a bandage wound around it. Then he moved to his right arm. He washed it and patted it dry with gauze.
Cedar St.
Lexington
Nebraska.
His head was pounding and his stomach was threatening to explode. He staggered back out to the book, the compendium. It was open to a page that made little sense. He picked it up.
“No fucking way.”
A wave of dizziness hit him and he staggered to the bed. He dropped the book as it hit again. It was hitting him faster than he expected. He fell to the bed, rolling to bury his face in his pillow as the little bit of light in the room lanced through him. The wounds in his arms throbbed and he groaned, wishing it would just pull him under all ready.
