Sledgehammers and the Fourth Wall (3/4)
Mar. 8th, 2013 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_lioraTitle: Sledgehammers and the Fourth Wall (3/4)
Wordcount: 8,864
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Dean/Sam, implied Jensen/OFC and Jared/Alona
Notes: This is the result of both an argument I saw on Youtube, and one I had in real life.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Supernatural, and Jared and Jensen are real people and certainly not the ones found here.
Summary: When the Winchesters go at the Fourth Wall they go at it hard.
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Sam is dreaming. He’s had a variation of this dream every night since they landed here, and while he knows Dean is having them too he hasn’t told his brother about his own messages from his host body. At first it was because Dean was raw, and then because he just didn’t think it was necessary. Now, as he stares through Jared’s eyes, he wonders if that was his way of avoiding admitting how badly he doesn’t want to be here.
Jared’s standing in the hallway in Morgan’s house, staring out the windows set into the door and watching Morgan wave her hands angrily as she talks to a man roughly her height with an angular and ratty face. The man’s eyes are narrow, and his lips work overtime while red burns in the cheeks of his pale face. Jared fills in the details Sam is missing in a quiet and unsure voice. His name is Peter and he’s her agent. We’re here because she sounded off and Jensen wanted me to check on her. When I got here Ray had just come back from a business trip. This is the part where I walk outside.
So Sam walked outside, and got the end of Morgan’s angry response. “-tell them I didn’t sell the rights because I knew they’d pull this on me. I wrote that part for him. I wrote it for him. Pitt can be in the next movie, because this one is for him.”
Peter’s eyes sweep him once and Sam can read the mixture of relief and something a little bit like hatred. “They know what they’re doing Morgan. It won’t kill you to let this go. Maybe a smaller part, or a smaller movie, or something but not the lead.”
“They try to stop me or block me and the movie never gets made. This won’t be a repeat of Kubrick and The Shining, I won’t have my work butchered for Hollywood’s approval. They cast Jensen or they don’t cast anybody.”
The agent looks to him, face both pleading and accusatory. “Tell her Padalecki. Tell her this is a bad move. That Jensen won’t want it either, because this will only make the rumors worse.”
He hears someone open and close the door behind him, but he can’t make Jared’s body turn. Ray, it’s Ray. This is the part that’s important.
Jared’s mouth moves, forming words that sound hesitant and displeased, “I can’t speak for Jensen or what he’ll want. I do think he doesn’t care about the rumors.”
“Thank you. Jesus a voice of reason. Ray tell him why it has to be Jensen.”
But when Ray steps around he doesn’t look like the light-hearted and happy man Sam has seen in the other memories. He looks burned out and exhausted. “I would but I don’t know. I do know this has gotten old Mo. Maybe it’s time to give in.”
Her big brown eyes narrow down and her lips twist in a sneer. “What? Dahlia’s spewing her suspicious bullshit again right? So my integrity, the integrity of my work, comes second to your sister’s belief that I’m sleeping with an actor.”
Ray steps forward, reaches for her, and then aborts the movement at the last second. “It’s weird Morgan. Dahlia just recognizes that.”
Sam feels awkward here, caught in between three very obviously arguing people, in the body of a man closely interconnected with the source of their disagreement, and trying to figure out how to slip away unnoticed even as he wants to stay and understand.
“They’re my friends and your sister doesn’t even know me. I’m a bad influence remember? I suck and everything I do is bad and-“
“She’s old school. You know that. She’s old school and she thinks that you’re spending too much time with other men. I kind of agree.”
Morgan’s eyes sweep over and land on him. “Then divorce me asshole.”
Then Sam is standing in her house, holding her hands as she pulls helplessly and twists against his hold. I didn’t understand. I just didn’t understand.
Her eyes come up, hollow and desperate, and Sam wants to pull her in, but Jared is too shocked and aghast to act properly. “Morgan. Morgan talk to me.”
“Let me go. Oh god let me go I can’t do this. I can’t live without-please Jared-“
Sam looks down at the wrists he’s holding and sees the blood, slick and hot and painting his skin. “Morgan we gotta get you cleaned up darlin’. This is bad. They look-“
“I can hear him. I can hear him at night Jared and I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this, so please.”
He doesn’t listen, doesn’t grant mercy, and instead he pulls her away and bandages her wrists carefully. Feeds her sedatives and watches as she falls asleep before he pulls his phone out and taps out numbers. It rings once, and a voice that is like Dean’s but less gravelly answers swiftly and surely.
“Jay, what’s going on?”
“She tried-oh shit Jen this is bad. She tried to off herself. We gotta do something man, or she’s gonna finish herself off. Did you get the stuff?”
“Yeah. I did. Soon as the break starts we’re gonna have to do it. It has to work.”
Jared/Sam hangs up, and then watches her. When she wakes she’s more stable, apologizes for her behavior, and begs him not to tell Jensen. She won’t do it again. She promises. Her eyes tell a different story.
We had no other choice. You can see that right? We had no other choice. She keeps hurting her.
And that? That doesn’t make any sense, but Sam is awake now, and he can’t ask Jared what he meant.
-----
When Sam comes into the kitchen and hears Fall Out Boy he raises an eyebrow and she smiles at it. Her look is strained, and her hands are busy scooping the insides out of potatoes and dropping them into a huge bowl. The counter is covered with ingredients, and it’s obvious she’s been at this for a while.
“It’s ok. I put it on. Ray never cared for them. Too poppy or something.” Her hands shook as she scooped out the next chunk of potato flesh, and the skin cracked in her hold. “Shit.” She dropped the whole thing and put her hands over her face. “Shit, shit, shit. What’s-oh god what’s-“
Sam was moving before he had time to consider whether she’d want it or not, instinct and training taking over. He’d been taught to look through lies, to see what lay beneath the thin veneer of civility people used to cover their darkest secrets, and it had served him well over the years. What he had taught himself though was to be Dean’s counterpoint, to know when things needed to be soft and gentle. He’d learned how to offer comfort, how to see despair, and how to soothe it as best as possible. It was something his brother was exceedingly bad at, and it let Sam fill a niche that would have otherwise been lacking in their emotionally restrained family unit.
Both his arms encased her, and he could smell the grief and misery rolling off her as she gripped his shirt in little hands and sobbed her fear into his chest. His hands moved mechanically over her back, slow and steady, gentle, and he let her cry it out before he started speaking. “Ok. Ok Morgan I got you. I got you now.”
When she finally spoke she sounded all of five years old. “I’m so scared. I’m so scared. What’s happening? I’m going crazy right? You and Dean aren’t here, and there’s no ghost, I’m just sitting in the living room and this is all in my imagination. Right?” There was hope there, but it was steeped in fear, and Sam couldn’t tell which answer she really wanted to believe, because she didn’t know either.
So he changed the subject, and that was a trick he knew from his father and brother. “What are you making?”
“Twice-“ her voice hitched and then she pulled back and rubbed viciously at her face, “twice-baked potato casserole. Enough cholesterol to kill lesser men.” It sounded like an old joke, and Sam offered a smile that she tremulously echoed.
“Sounds exactly like something Dean would adore. Is it one of Jensen’s favorites?”
She rolled her eyes and picked up the potato again, hands moving with precision and care.
“No. Jared. You may not be able to tell by the way he feels, but he’s a glutton like none I’ve ever seen before. It’s a crime against nature that he isn’t a thousand pounds.”
“I feel that way about Dean a lot.” He watches her mix the potatoes with cream and eggs, pour in cheeses and spices, and then she spoons the whole concoction into a casserole dish and sprinkles cheese on top before shoving it into the oven. Her eyes travel over the kitchen before settling somewhere a foot off of his face.
“Ray used to call this kitchen therapy. Said it was my way of dealing with stress that writing couldn’t work off. I would bake, a lot, and he would sit back and tell me that as much as he hated seeing me upset he loved the cookies.” There's this dreamy fond look on her face that makes Sam hurt and yearn, and he sips his coffee and looks out to the tree she indicated the night before.
"You loved him a lot," It's not quite the point he wants to get too, but he can make his way there slowly. He's used to circuitous conversations.
"Yeah. I really did. I can play the full widow and pull out pictures if you'd like. I've got enough of them." Her grin is sad when he glances, but her fingers only shake a little.
"I'd like that. A lot. So were you and Jensen-?" He cuts himself off and makes a hand gesture. Slowly Sam. Go slow.
Morgan raises one red eyebrow and then sets the timer. "No. Just friends. He’s not-it’s just not like that. He’s not into commitment and I’m so-" She makes a wobbly hand gesture and looks back into the dining room where a tall bookshelf stands next to another window.
Sam grabs a seat on the nook bench and listens to her dig through the bookshelf before she returns waving a giant photo album. She wasn't joking about the amount of pictures. Morgan's fingers are steady and her face blank again as she flips through to the front and points to the first picture. Her eyes aren't as dark, and she's a little heavier in it. The man standing next to her has one arm casually flung over her shoulders, and they're squinting into the sun behind the photographer. There's a smile that lurks on the corner of his lips, and her fingers are twined around his pants leg.
"I was eighteen. Working on my first book and my B.A. Ray was thirty-three. We met through a mutual friend, and I was in love with him two days later." She flips through pages. Pictures of them with groups of people, most in a small apartment filled with books and DVDs. She points people out every now and then but mostly she just lets Sam look and soak it in. The story is easy to follow. She gets thinner as the years go on, their clothes look just as cheap but the surroundings get a little fancier. Moving day to the house they're in now, book signing, wedding day. He sees the introduction of the two actors, sees a variety of things, and when it's done he breaks protocol and simply jumps to where he wants to be.
"About what you saw last night. I just-"
"You and Dean have known each other Biblically. It's ok Sam I got the memo." She took in his nonplussed expression for a long time and then leaned back in the nook's bench seat and rubbed at her eyes tiredly. "I told Dean and he didn't have the grace to deny it properly. Is this where you start pumping me for an opinion?"
Well she'd apparently given Dean one. It occurred to Sam this may be the only time in his life when he had a chance to ask someone. Plus she'd never be able to tell anyone they knew. So he nodded and watched her face carefully.
"I told Dean that I don't care. I don't. Whatever broke that dam, good for you. Or bad if it's going to be something you guys can't get over. Either way you deserve a little happiness I think."
Sam snorts once and then leans in and points to a picture of her slung over Ray's back with her mouth open in an eternal squeal. "We'll never be happy. That's not the way it goes for Winchesters."
"That's the most depressing goddamn thing I've ever heard you say." Morgan squints once at the picture before shutting the album. "I'm a widow at thirty and I'm still not that depressing. What does that say about you?"
"You didn't hear what he said. You didn't see his face. He was…it's never going to happen. He's got this crazy idea that I'm not old enough or informed enough to give consent, and when Dean gets like that there's no swaying him."
Morgan raises an eyebrow before tapping his shoulder. “It couldn’t be that bad. You guys say some heinous stuff to each other all the time. Did it top the ‘If I didn’t know you I’d want to hunt you’ moment?”
It’s hard sometimes to bridge the gap between reality and understanding, and Sam thought he knew that. For example, reality is that she has watched their lives play out on a television screen while she sipped a coke or ate popcorn or whatever. Understanding that she has witnessed the worst of Sam’s life, has taken in all of his sins and tragedies and can remember them in a way that is totally impersonal and forgiving, in a way Sam has no chance of doing, is a completely different thing. A thing that doesn’t hit him until this moment, when it feels like she’s punched the breath out of him.
“How did-what-you saw that?”
A look came over her face, and then she bit her lip and shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t even-Jesus I’m an idiot. Of course that would be terrible to mention. Look don’t listen to me, I’m not great with face to face interaction. It’s just not my thing. I didn’t mean anything by-“
“It was worse than that.” He thinks of the cold expression on Dean’s face. Eyes closed off and jaw tight as he cast that disapproving look, as he told Sam just how little it had meant with the worst words he could have possibly chosen.
Morgan’s eyes are sad and warm, but her face stays carefully composed and blank. “What did he say?”
“That it was a mistake. That the whole thing was the combination of my availability and alcohol. That I needed to act differently and put it behind us.”
Which is close, so goddamn close, to what actually was said. To be specific, Dean’s words had been “We messed up Sam, but we won’t do it again. You stop throwing yourself at me, and I’ll stop being a drunken idiot and taking it. We gotta put this behind us little brother. We can do that if you stop acting like a clingy one-night stand.”
Her lips twitch once, and then she stands and limps over to the fridge before pulling out a bottled water and offering him a second. He takes it, and watches her screw the cap off hers and drink long and deep.
“Can you forgive him?”
Sam has to consider that. Can he? Can he get over the part where even now Dean will only turn to him when desperation is involved? Can he forgive Dean for taking something that Sam knows meant everything to both of them and relegating it to the trash heap with every other casual fuck he’s ever had?
He doesn’t know. He honestly can’t tell, and that bothers him. Before he could say there wasn’t anything Dean could do that would make Sam consider not forgiving him. They’ve been through so much, let so much go, but this one hits too hard and too close. This one takes years of longing that Sam tried so hard to subdue or forget, to hide from Dean’s ever watchful gaze, and makes it the exact type of dirtybadwrong that Sam always knew it was. Showed him all his fears were stupidly true.
It’s the antithesis of Dean’s purpose really. His older brother has spent his entire life proving to Sam that his fears are unfounded, protecting him from injury, and generally trying to keep Sam safe and whole at all costs. It’s weird, it’s cataclysmically weird, for Dean to be the one to confirm Sam’s fears. For him to the thing Sam is afraid of. Maybe Sam played that role for Dean when he was fighting the demon blood, when he was traipsing around with Ruby making a general monster out of himself, but Dean has never done it to Sam.
So when his mouth moves he can’t stop himself from letting it pour out like pus from a wound. “I don’t know. I just can’t-it’s Dean you know? It’s Dean. I knew he’d be angsty over it. I knew that he’d bring up the line, and how important it was we stay on the righteous side of it. He’s spent his whole life so programmed from dad that he can’t get over that belief that I’m a baby that has to be held safe and sound against a cruel and unforgiving world. When I was little I loved that. Loved him for it. But it chafes after a while, and going to Stanford was supposed to help but it didn’t. It just screwed things up worse, and now here we are all these years later and I can’t figure out what I want or what he can give me. I know he kind of hates me for leading him down that road, but can he forgive me for it? And if he can will I forgive him? I don’t know.”
Morgan’s fingers rub at her chin for a second before she looks over her shoulder at the oven and the slowly building smell of melting cheese.
“Dean ever tell you about the dream walking epi-incident? About what he saw when you two were split up?”
The look Sam gives her is sufficient, her face says that, but he answers verbally anyway. “No. Dean’s never been good at necessary sharing and caring.”
She simply nods before starting to chew on the skin of her thumb. “Well, there was a scene in that, and he sort of faces off with himself. Except it’s not him it’s the version of him he sees coming down the road. It’s demon Dean, and the two of them get into it physically and verbally for a little bit. Anyway, it’s just a projection of his subconscious, and that means anything it says is what your brother believes right?”
Sam nods hesitantly. Doesn’t like the way this is going. Because he remembers the timelines, and he knows now what he didn’t know then. The knowledge Ruby gave his brother, and how Dean carried that sentence of damnation around silently until he finally cracked and let Sam promise to help him.
“The other him, the dark him, told him he was ‘daddy’s little blunt instrument’.” Sam gasps harshly, unable to stop himself, and Morgan nods. “Harshest fucking thing I ever heard anybody say about themselves. The point is, Dean believed that then. I can’t help but wonder if he still does. He had a revelation moment then, but that’s not the kind of mental scarring you just shrug off. So maybe, the first step to forgiving him is knowing that he’s not mad at you, he’s mad at himself.”
“You have a psych degree your biography didn’t mention?”
Morgan’s eyes glitter for a second, and Sam’s pretty sure that’s the look the actors have known for years. If Jensen Ackles is in love with her, it’s that look that would cause it.
“Nope. But I write a fair amount of dialogue, and I have pretty good character development. Lets me see deep into the human mind.”
With that she opened her laptop, and began to busily type. Conversation effectively ended, and Sam was pretty glad.
-----
When Dean finally joined him downstairs Morgan was outside in the sun with a cigarette in her fingers and her head turned away from them. Sam waited until Dean was fully in the kitchen and trying to inject coffee down his throat without the necessary civilities of swallowing or sipping.
“Dean. We need to talk. In those dreams Jensen is sending you is he giving you any hints?”
Dean’s jaw moved as hazy eyes traveled over the room and then settled on Sam’s face. He could see the way Dean was favoring the shoulder that got hurt the night before, and he wondered just how much pain Dean was carrying around, and what it would take to purge him of it.
“The phone. He’s been pretty damn insistent that there are answers on the phone, but I can’t get the damn thing unlocked.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully and then pointed to his skull. Or Jared’s skull. It was hard to keep up.
“I’ve been having dreams.” Dean collapsed across from him and raised an eyebrow so he would continue. “About Jared. Or from Jared. Anyway, the main thrust seems to be about marital difficulties Ray and Morgan were having.”
Dean looked out the window and grunted once. “Actors?”
“Yeah, but not directly. Ray had a sister that didn’t seem too fond of Morgan.”
“I think I-she mentioned the sister in the hospital. Said the woman was gonna hate her.”
Sam nodded, pieces of the puzzle struggling to get in line and together. “Maybe the haunting is the sister? We should ask if she’s still alive and terrorizing Morgan, or if she’s dead where she’s buried.”
His brother squinted both eyes thoughtfully and finished his coffee. “Not a bad plan Sammy. We’ll make a hunter of you yet.”
And Sam? Well he was a pretty reasonable guy, but that was sort of low and ugly. Sam had been hunting exclusively for years now, and he was pretty sure he’d paid his damn dues. After all, how many hunters could claim the sort of personal death toll as him, or how many times he’d saved the world, or how much bullshit he’d put up with from Dean? Honestly Sam was pretty sure at this point he needed to be nominated for sainthood.
As if Dean could read his mind, the little smile playing at the corner of his lips died and his eyes shuttered and swept off of Sam’s face and somewhere far away. “Lighten up bitch. It was a joke.”
Except it really wasn’t, and Sam knew that. “Maybe you should pick your jokes a little better.”
“Maybe you should lighten up.”
“Maybe you should face your issues so we can be friendly again.”
Dean’s lips pursed tight and angry and he slammed a fist into the table. “My issues? My issues at the moment are that we’re supposed to be saving that woman and you can only focus on that one mistake. My issues are that we have no idea if this will really get us back or what it means that our bodies are there and not occupied. My issues have to do with you thinking it’s ok to be more than brothers, because that shit is bad Sammy. It ain’t normal, and you know that. Tell me you know that.”
He stood and waved his hands once, passion bleeding into resignation. “I know you think it. I also know that doesn’t mean it’s relevant or true. It meant something. I saw you asshole, and I know that it meant something to you. It meant-Jesus Dean how can you do this? How can you pretend like this?”
Green eyes burned hotly, and fists clenched tight. “I’m not pretending anything Sammy. I’m being me, and me says you don’t fuck your little brother.”
“Oh yeah? Well me says-“
The timer went off, shrill and sudden, and then the door opened and Morgan came through and eyed both of them before grabbing a potholder and pulling the casserole out. She didn’t look at them when she spoke. “Awkward.”
-----
“There’s bacon in here.” It was the first thing that had been said in half an hour, and Sam jerked at the sound of it. It was hard to tell if Dean sounded more pleased or scandalized.
Morgan, for her part, simply stared at her plate as broke off another small bite before carefully lifting it. “Yes. About a pound.” She bit the cheesy concoction and chewed slowly.
Sam kind of wanted to scream. There was no way to play off the tension in the room. Dean could try, but this wasn’t something that would be buried, and that was ultimately their problem. Burying this would bury them.
But Dean would try, and Dean would keep trying until Sam gave up or they had one of their explosive fights that ended with Sam swearing he would leave for good and finding out, once again, that he couldn’t get away from his brother. That he couldn’t escape.
It was almost a relief when the light fixture crashed into the table.
Morgan’s scream cut over the sound of the crashing glass, and Sam was unable to get out of the bench fast enough to catch her before she’d stumbled out, twisted her bad knee, and crashed heavily into the fridge. The metal casing of the fixture swept forward dragging the casserole dish with it and slammed into the smooth white front of the fridge beside her head.
Sam was up then, hands slamming out and catching the table before it could move too and decapitate her. The shock of the wood slamming into his palms reverberated up his arms even as Dean was shouting his name, and then Sam was officially wrestling with a kitchen table.
It seemed like forever before Dean was there, shoving with him, and then his brother’s gruff voice broke over the chaotic sounds filling the brightly lit kitchen. “Morgan go, get out of the house!”
Sam watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw her roll over, watched the knee collapse on her and then she crawled out of the kitchen. He could hear other things in the house crashing and falling, but at the moment all he could think of was the adrenaline rush of pushing against the table, until he heard the outside door slam and the table went slack in his hands.
Beside him Dean breathed heavily, and then green eyes locked him in place even as Dean’s rough hands grabbed his and lifted them up to inspect them. Despite the fight they’d been having and all the tension Dean’s touch was gentle and tender. It reminded Sam of the beginning, of all the things that they weren’t supposed to think about, and then it was gone and Dean was leaving him in the kitchen. Sam followed, found Dean outside pulling Morgan up off the pavement of the patio and inspecting the fine cuts along her face and neck.
And was he surprised when she grabbed onto his brother and called him Jensen as she shook? When Dean simply rubbed her back and stayed silent? Not really.
----
For some reason it fell to Sam to pack Morgan’s clothes, and he was suspicious that if they weren’t still on a knife’s edge Dean would have called him a girl, and said that gave him permission to touch her underwear. For which Dean would have earned a massive punch, and Sam felt a little like punching Dean right about then.
When he finally finished he came out to see Dean standing in the driveway, plush lower lip trapped in between his teeth as Morgan sat curled in a blanket and shaking while she lit one cigarette off of another. She looked up at him, and her red-rimmed eyes were on the edge of hysteria. “I can’t-was it-“ she shook herself and drew up a little, “did you see it? Was it Ray?”
He threw the bag to Dean and his brother caught it easily. Sam wanted to be back home. He wanted to fight a troll, something known and easy, but that didn’t seem like it would be on the menu any time soon. Instead he was trapped here, in another man’s body, taking care of business for some actors, and hating his situation more with every moment. He took a knee beside her, reached out and plucked the cigarette from her fingers before extinguishing it in the ashtray, and then gently cupped her face. Neosporin shone where Dean had carefully applied it, and the tracks of dried tears stood out against her face amongst all the tiny red lines.
“I didn’t see. I’m sorry Morgan. We should have got you out of here last night. That was our oversight, but it won’t happen again. We’re going to hole you up nice and safe, and then Dean and I are going to figure this out and get rid of whatever is doing it. I promise you. We won’t let it hurt you again ok?”
She took several deep watery breaths, and then her smile came tremulous and unhappy. “I’m such a pansy. I’m sorry. If I was writing this I’d make myself strong and helpful, but I can’t handle-I just don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Sam brushed red hair back and thought about all the times they’d had people fall apart on them compared to the situations in which the victims handled having their entire world shattered with violence and anger. He almost preferred it this way. The other type of reaction…it always resulted in something bad. “No one expects you to do anything specific. You’re handling this really well. Believe me, I’m an expert. Now tell us where to drive you. A local hotel, some place you can hide out.”
Morgan let herself be carried to the SUV, and Dean drove while Sam sat in the back with her. She huddled low, pressed against his side, and shook the whole way. After she’d been settled into the motel room with her bad knee propped up carefully and swaddled in ice Sam made sure she had her phone at hand and was as comfortable as she could be. She muttered ominously when he offered her painkillers, but she ended up taking them obediently and letting herself be soothed by the sound of his voice.
When they got back into the Denali Dean’s face was grim and cold, and he backed out of the space before heading towards the turnpike. The GPS told them that the nearest occult store was over a half hour away, in the closest major city, and Dean drove with finality and purpose. The radio droned in the background, low and quiet, and Sam let his head rest against the seat as the road rumbled beneath them.
“We shoulda taken her out last night. Why the hell didn’t we take her out last night Sam? Rookie shit.”
In Sam’s head his response was delivered with perfect poise and grace. Well Dean, that’s because we’re in love with each other. Like brothers, but brothers who really want to taste each other’s skin, and that’s distracting us. I’m in love with you, but I can’t have you and it’s making me crazy. I’m tearing myself apart because all I can feel is you, and all I can hear is that goddamn line you left me with. That last blow where you basically told me I was the same as every bar slut you ever took home. For your part, the distraction is because you feel guilty about what we did, what you said, and how I’m reacting. You want to grab me up and cuddle me, you want to soothe me, and you can’t. So instead you went to Morgan in a desperate attempt to get that tenderness out of your system before you directed it the way you wanted to. Technically you’re suffering from cognitive dissonance.
What came out of his mouth sounded wrecked and exhausted. “I don’t know.”
----
The occult shop turned out to be much better stocked than Sam could have hoped for. The woman behind the counter was knowledgeable, friendly, and most importantly professional. Usually going somewhere with Dean made watching him flirt an unavoidable eventuality. Sam was grateful for the little things.
After their night together Dean has been kind enough, or torn up enough Sam wasn’t sure, to wait two nights before he got back on the horse. The end result though, had been a two month span that made Dean look like he was personally trying to outstrip Sodom and Gomorrah for the right of trashiest place in history. His brother came home every night reeking of so many different chemical scents and fluids Sam couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him most nights.
Dean was kind enough not to comment on Sam sleeping in the Impala. He’d give him that. And while it hurt, and it hurt worse than anything Sam could remember, it wasn’t something he hadn’t expected. Dean was reasserting his ability to be active with other people, enforcing his statement to Sam, and reassuring himself that it was a one-time thing. His brother’s coping mechanisms were fairly easy to predict.
He was dragged out of his memories by Dean parking in the wrap-around drive and eyeing the house suspiciously. “If that thing is so attack happy should we make the bags out here?”
“Probably the safest idea.” Something was nagging at the back of Sam’s head. Something he couldn’t pin down long enough to really remember or figure it out. Instead he worked over the almost second-nature process of creating the little wards against ghosts. When they were done they used the house key on Jensen’s ring to open the garage door and go through there. Two hammers to punch holes, and an iron bar as a weapon didn’t feel as complete or ready as Sam’s shotgun loaded with rock salt.
The house was old, the research he’d done placed its construction in the twenties, and that meant the walls were solidly built and harder to break into. The bill to fix the holes they’d be making would be kinda pricey, and the patch job he was planning on with putty wasn’t going to be much of a fix at all. It was going to look terrible too, and there wasn’t anything he could-
Sam stopped, hand poised backwards and held perfectly still as he stared at the fourth hole he’d made. It was the last room upstairs, and he could hear Dean banging away downstairs. Sam looked around the room, at the books that had fallen in the earlier attack and the rumpled sheets. It was the one lesson Dean had never taken from dad, making his own damn bed. Too dependent on the idea that they’d be leaving the motel and the maid could take care of their mess.
His mind jumped from one place to another, Dean’s habits, the books sprawled out, the distant banging, and then it clicked. Sam had punched four holes in the walls. Sam had placed three bags. The worst part of the whole process had been breaking through the thick old walls.
Nothing had put up even a bit of fight.
Sam jumps the last step and almost crashes into his brother. Dean’s got the hammer half-up and an eyebrow crawling into the region of his hairline. “What? It after you?”
There’s a half second where Sam wants to snap at Dean, because really? “Get Jensen’s phone and get in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”
And Dean? For once just goes along with it. Which makes Sam bitterly happy.
-----
It takes all of three seconds to type the name into the password slot and watch the phone’s home screen glow into life. Dean glances over once and manages to sound both harried and aggrieved. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I used her name.” He started with the text messages, and found only one in the inbox. Sent from someone simply named Horner, I found what you wanted and it should be in your inbox. I implore you to contact the police Mr. Ackles. If this information is correct your friend may be in serious trouble. If not the police may I suggest a good security firm?
“I tried her name Sam. What do you think I’m stupid?”
He bit his cheek and scrolled through options until he found the inbox. The actor left it logged in, and Sam was grateful even as he cursed at the volume of mail. It took a few seconds to find the email in question.
“No Dean, I think you used her maiden name, which is what she writes her books under. Her married name is Luludi.”
Dean’s fingers tap briskly on the wheel as he takes a turn in the Denali too tight and bumps over the curve. How much time has passed since they doped Morgan up and left her in the motel room? A half hour to get to the shop, a little less than that getting their ingredients, the stop at the diner, almost an hour back to her house, the assembly time and then all that wasted time putting holes in her walls. Four and a half, maybe five, and then the time it’ll take to get there.
“Luludi? Doesn’t sound…shit Sammy is that Rom?”
“Yep.” He scans through the beginning information, Horner talking about the investigation and what it took to find what he wanted and what it meant. Then he found the emails in question between Ray and his “old school” sister.
The information is basically what he expected, and he reads it as he talks to Dean. “All the ghost was doing before we showed up was driving her nuts Dean. Pushing her to suicide, but not attacking her. It was all too personal, and we were going in too many directions to notice that.” His lips tighten when he sees the email Horner collected from Dahlia to Marcus Vigelli, the crazy fan he’d read about in his research on Morgan’s attack. The one in which Dahlia tells him how to get into the house without being detected.
“And then it got nuts because it thought we were the actors and we were spending time with her?”
“No. The actors have been there on and off for the last year and that never set it off.” He flips to the end and sees conversations between Ray and Dahlia in which the dead man begs his sister to understand. To accept his decision to trust Morgan, and to not try anything. To not fall on the “old ways”. “It was after we started proving we were something that could stop it. When we started searching into what it was. The ghost knew we were close to figuring it out, and it got nervous. Tried to jump ahead instead of slowly making her do it herself. Jensen hired a private eye who found conversations between the sister and the guy that attacked Morgan, and Ray begging her not to do anything. Remember what Morgan said? About Ray insisting she cremate him?”
“Yeah. Thought that was just preference but…he must not of wanted his sister to use him against her if he died.”
Sam’s lips tightened and he found the last piece of evidence. Something that Horner didn’t understand, thought was simply driven by malice, but Sam got the implications all too well. Jensen must have understood it too. “But she paid for Vigelli’s funeral. So that the state wouldn’t cremate him. Which means the haunting isn’t-“
Dean’s fist struck the steering wheel as he turned into the town’s main drag and headed towards the edge of it and the motel they’d left Morgan vulnerable in. “Locked down to a location. It’s wherever the bitch wants it to be. How much Vicodin did we give her?”
“Enough to keep her asleep for at least six hours.” Sam closed the phone and rubbed his eyes. “Enough to keep her out of it if anyone showed up.”
And when they reached the motel room and found it empty, the door half open and the sheets dragged and blood spotted? Sam wasn’t surprised.
-----
Dean’s hands were fisted in his short hair, the muscle in his jaw ticking off as he held himself in a tight trembling line, and Sam watched him for a bit before he gripped his own knees. “Ok, let’s think about this. She wants to hurt her, and she knows we’re at the house. So the house is out. If she wants to make it personal and painful where would she go?”
His brother shakes his head and looks up to the ceiling. “Someplace with resonance, something she’d know why she was there and what she did. Someplace that’ll hurt her.”
Sam thinks of the pictures of Morgan leaning on Ray, eyes young and bright, happy and alive. All the years he’s been doing this, and it still amazes him how absolutely shitty and terrible human beings can be to each other. Dahlia’s hatred had achieved nothing but her beloved brother’s death. At least until now. Now when her hatred was so focused she would-
“The graveyard. She must have tried to use her brother first, and when it didn’t work she went with Vigelli. If she’s taking everything personally then Morgan switching out the coffins and denying her the use of her brother in her vengeance scheme must have made her crazy.”
“Er. Crazier.” Dean’s hands come down, and he flashes that proud smile Sam has always loved. The one that makes him feel a hundred feet tall and magical. “Good work Sammy. Let’s do this.”
The GPS easily finds the graveyard closest to Morgan’s house, and Dean drives like a maniac the whole way there. The winding and deserted back roads are pitch black and Sam manages to not yell at Dean to slow down when they come over the top of a hill and leave the ground for a short time. This car is too big for his usual antics, but Dean has no other way to act, and Sam has no interest in fighting again. Not now anyway.
Sam spends the ride assembling what little ordinance they have. A kitchen knife, the iron bar, and a bag of rock salt he grabbed from the garage. The car skids to a stop outside of the graveyard and Sam can see by the moonlight that this part of it is empty. It’s narrow, but it reaches far back from the road.
Dean catches his eye, nods towards the back and lifts the iron bar. They stay low, splitting across the width of the cemetery and keeping each other’s pace. Halfway back, when the road is distant enough that Sam’s fairly certain he wouldn’t hear a passing car; he hears a choked noise and a woman’s voice. She sounds older, slightly hysterical, and coldly accusatory.
“My baby brother. It is your fault he’s dead. He wanted so badly to believe in you, and he wouldn’t accept that his wife was a dirty whore.”
They take the next step, and there’s the sister. She’s got a skull in her hands, beringed fingers stroking it almost lovingly as the fully formed ghost holds Morgan against a tree by her throat. Morgan’s face is pale, and it’s hard to make out distinct features in the milky light. Her eyes are two dark smudges set into her face though, and Sam can see the way her mouth gapes open as she tries to breathe.
Sam’s on the side with the sister, and Dean’s closer to Morgan and the ghost. It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly if they had planned it. Which is why Sam immediately distrusts it.
Dean’s face says he agrees, but he counts down from three with his fingers before they break cover and lunge towards the tableau in front of them. Sam swings the knife, and misses his goal of the woman’s arm instead knocking against the skull, the sound of metal skittering along bone loud in the graveyard. Dean’s a little luckier, and when he swings the bar it temporarily scatters the ghost’s essence even as his brother catches the author and holds her up.
Dahlia’s hands fly upwards, and she thrusts the skull at Sam angrily. He’s flying backwards before he has a chance to do anything about it, breath driven out of him by the hard granite headstone that hits him in the back. Dahlia lets out a wordless scream of rage and points the skull at Dean. His brother’s hands drop off of Morgan as he goes flying and hits the tree at a wickedly diagonal angle before slamming into the ground. Sam fights to breathe even as he uses the tombstone to push himself up.
“You two. You thought you could come to my world and stop justice? You are mistaken.” In the moonlight the deep twist of Dahlia’s scowl and the burning hatred in her eyes are hideously highlighted.
Sam can hear Dean stirring, the rough gasps of Morgan on the ground a few feet from him, and the sound of leaves rattling like dry bones across the stones around him. He closes his eyes and tries to get control, to remember how to move his arms and draw deep lungfuls of oxygen. Feet crunch towards him, and Sam shifts his grip on the knife and waits. Takes his time with it. Then, when she’s standing over him and chuckling Sam shifts his grip on the knife and drives it through her ankle. There’s a burst of blood, a hideous wail, and the skull clatters to the ground beside his head. He’s staring into the dead murderer’s hollow eye sockets, and without Dahlia’s power pushing him the ghost flickers in and out of existence from his spot near where Dean has fallen.
Dahlia’s screams ring out over the ground, but Sam is already grabbing the skull from the ground and rolling onto his side even as he shouts, “Dean catch!”
It should be a long shot, shouldn’t work at all, but there’s a reason Sam loves his brother. When the pressure is on Dean never lets him down. The skull arcs, rolls in the air, and then Dean’s hand shoots over the top of a gravestone and catches the skull neatly.
The arm disappears and Dahlia tries to limp towards it. Her progress is seriously halted when Sam grabs her ankle and pulls, and then he’s lifting himself up with the help of the headstone he hit and stomping brutally on the ankle he put the knife through. Now her screams are muffled by the ground beneath her face, and Sam stagger-steps ahead and reaches for Morgan even as Dahlia scrambles to grab at his pants. She can’t get a hold though, and Sam has a destination.
Morgan’s still gasping, fingers digging in the dirt, and Sam can see now how glazed her eyes still are, and how slack her mouth is around her desperate attempts for air. He sweeps her up, and then heads for Dean. His brother is almost to the car when it hits him, and he shouts ahead, “Dean! Gas?”
Small fingers tug at his shirt, and Sam finds a way to bend down towards her mouth even as he lopes with an awkward gait over the ground. “Li-lighter-fluid.”
Gas was the least of their worries, the actors don’t carry lighters, but Morgan has a Zippo. Sam shifts her carefully and finds her pockets before digging in them. The lighter drops into his hands, and he’s already flipping it open and deconstructing it as he finally reaches Dean. His brother holds the skull out, and Sam pulls the cartridge free and squeezes the cotton. They need enough to get the skull burning, and he can see the salt granules Dean has already poured, but there has to be some leftover for the lighter to work.
Vigelli is still flickering, following them with his mouth open in a soundless wail, and Dahlia’s stumbling steps are crashing closer as she screams vehement hate at them. Sam passes the lighter off to Dean and he drops the skull onto the ground and then reconstructs the lighter before striking the wheel once, twice, and then Sam’s breath whooshes out when the wick catches and the skull starts to burn merrily. The ghost blows into pieces and light, and Dahlia’s scream is unearthly and terrifying.
----
It’s bizarre to be standing in a cemetery and having a civil conversation with a police officer. Morgan’s on the back of the ambulance, the EMT flashing the light in her eyes and checking over her throat. Dahlia has already been carted off, screaming the whole way, and Sam shifts carefully and rubs at his lower back while Dean keeps shooting him glances Sam can read all too well.
“So Ms. Luludi took Morgan out here to kill her because of a vendetta about Ray?” The sheriff looks over at Morgan for a moment and then shakes his head. “Other than you two I’d say that girl doesn’t have any kind of luck but bad.”
Sam manages a careful smile. “Well we try. Is that all you needed?”
The sheriff slips his notebook away and holds out a hand that Sam is glad to shake. This may be weird, but it’s a good kind of weird. “Obviously I’ll need you boys to come in tomorrow and give a statement at the office. Plus testimony when it goes to trial, but that’ll be a while. In the meantime, will you look after her? I knew her mom really well. Breaks my heart to see her so shaken up.”
“We’ll take care of her.” The sheriff gives Dean a knowing look, and then goes back to where his officers are taking pictures of the crime scene.
----
After Morgan is cleared to go home, with more painkillers in her system than before, Sam rides in the back again and feels the almost insubstantial weight of her snoring into his side. She wakes up when they get to the house, and blearily tries to help when Sam lifts her out of the backseat and carries her towards the house.
He pours her a glass of water and watches as she sips at it slowly and stares at them. When it’s done she rasps out a low whisper. “I know we got off to a rough start with the bat and all, but thank you guys. So much. You saved my life and my sanity, and-thank you.” Her eyes are full of tears, and Sam submits himself to another hug. When he steps back she rubs at her face sleepily before swallowing delicately. “Will you still be here when I wake up?”
“I don’t think so Morgan. I’m pretty sure we’ve done what we were summoned for.”
“But you’ll be ok. You’ve got Jensen and Jared, and they obviously care about you a whole lot. You’re gonna be just fine sweetheart.”
She nods once and then gestures for Dean. His brother leans in close, and Morgan whispers something in his ear that Sam can’t hear. From this angle Dean’s face is hidden, but the line in his brother’s shoulders suggests that whatever he’s hearing he doesn’t particularly care for it. When Dean pulls back she points an admonishing finger and gives a weak and crooked grin. “Remember that ok?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Sam puts her to bed, and then looks around the wreckage of the kitchen before digging in the cabinet with the trashcan for the broom and dustpan. He finds everything he needs and starts sweeping up even as Dean studies him from across the kitchen.
“You did really good today Sammy. Figured it all out just in time.”
He doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to see the expression that goes with that heavy tone. “Thank you Dean.” It’s so formal, and he hates it. Hates everything. The glass crashes into the trashcan and then Sam puts everything back and stretches out his sore back. “Let’s go to bed.”
And they do. When they wake up in the motel room in Louisiana Sam isn’t sure if he’s relieved or sorry. He just tries not to think about it.
Wordcount: 8,864
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Dean/Sam, implied Jensen/OFC and Jared/Alona
Notes: This is the result of both an argument I saw on Youtube, and one I had in real life.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Supernatural, and Jared and Jensen are real people and certainly not the ones found here.
Summary: When the Winchesters go at the Fourth Wall they go at it hard.
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Sam is dreaming. He’s had a variation of this dream every night since they landed here, and while he knows Dean is having them too he hasn’t told his brother about his own messages from his host body. At first it was because Dean was raw, and then because he just didn’t think it was necessary. Now, as he stares through Jared’s eyes, he wonders if that was his way of avoiding admitting how badly he doesn’t want to be here.
Jared’s standing in the hallway in Morgan’s house, staring out the windows set into the door and watching Morgan wave her hands angrily as she talks to a man roughly her height with an angular and ratty face. The man’s eyes are narrow, and his lips work overtime while red burns in the cheeks of his pale face. Jared fills in the details Sam is missing in a quiet and unsure voice. His name is Peter and he’s her agent. We’re here because she sounded off and Jensen wanted me to check on her. When I got here Ray had just come back from a business trip. This is the part where I walk outside.
So Sam walked outside, and got the end of Morgan’s angry response. “-tell them I didn’t sell the rights because I knew they’d pull this on me. I wrote that part for him. I wrote it for him. Pitt can be in the next movie, because this one is for him.”
Peter’s eyes sweep him once and Sam can read the mixture of relief and something a little bit like hatred. “They know what they’re doing Morgan. It won’t kill you to let this go. Maybe a smaller part, or a smaller movie, or something but not the lead.”
“They try to stop me or block me and the movie never gets made. This won’t be a repeat of Kubrick and The Shining, I won’t have my work butchered for Hollywood’s approval. They cast Jensen or they don’t cast anybody.”
The agent looks to him, face both pleading and accusatory. “Tell her Padalecki. Tell her this is a bad move. That Jensen won’t want it either, because this will only make the rumors worse.”
He hears someone open and close the door behind him, but he can’t make Jared’s body turn. Ray, it’s Ray. This is the part that’s important.
Jared’s mouth moves, forming words that sound hesitant and displeased, “I can’t speak for Jensen or what he’ll want. I do think he doesn’t care about the rumors.”
“Thank you. Jesus a voice of reason. Ray tell him why it has to be Jensen.”
But when Ray steps around he doesn’t look like the light-hearted and happy man Sam has seen in the other memories. He looks burned out and exhausted. “I would but I don’t know. I do know this has gotten old Mo. Maybe it’s time to give in.”
Her big brown eyes narrow down and her lips twist in a sneer. “What? Dahlia’s spewing her suspicious bullshit again right? So my integrity, the integrity of my work, comes second to your sister’s belief that I’m sleeping with an actor.”
Ray steps forward, reaches for her, and then aborts the movement at the last second. “It’s weird Morgan. Dahlia just recognizes that.”
Sam feels awkward here, caught in between three very obviously arguing people, in the body of a man closely interconnected with the source of their disagreement, and trying to figure out how to slip away unnoticed even as he wants to stay and understand.
“They’re my friends and your sister doesn’t even know me. I’m a bad influence remember? I suck and everything I do is bad and-“
“She’s old school. You know that. She’s old school and she thinks that you’re spending too much time with other men. I kind of agree.”
Morgan’s eyes sweep over and land on him. “Then divorce me asshole.”
Then Sam is standing in her house, holding her hands as she pulls helplessly and twists against his hold. I didn’t understand. I just didn’t understand.
Her eyes come up, hollow and desperate, and Sam wants to pull her in, but Jared is too shocked and aghast to act properly. “Morgan. Morgan talk to me.”
“Let me go. Oh god let me go I can’t do this. I can’t live without-please Jared-“
Sam looks down at the wrists he’s holding and sees the blood, slick and hot and painting his skin. “Morgan we gotta get you cleaned up darlin’. This is bad. They look-“
“I can hear him. I can hear him at night Jared and I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this, so please.”
He doesn’t listen, doesn’t grant mercy, and instead he pulls her away and bandages her wrists carefully. Feeds her sedatives and watches as she falls asleep before he pulls his phone out and taps out numbers. It rings once, and a voice that is like Dean’s but less gravelly answers swiftly and surely.
“Jay, what’s going on?”
“She tried-oh shit Jen this is bad. She tried to off herself. We gotta do something man, or she’s gonna finish herself off. Did you get the stuff?”
“Yeah. I did. Soon as the break starts we’re gonna have to do it. It has to work.”
Jared/Sam hangs up, and then watches her. When she wakes she’s more stable, apologizes for her behavior, and begs him not to tell Jensen. She won’t do it again. She promises. Her eyes tell a different story.
We had no other choice. You can see that right? We had no other choice. She keeps hurting her.
And that? That doesn’t make any sense, but Sam is awake now, and he can’t ask Jared what he meant.
-----
When Sam comes into the kitchen and hears Fall Out Boy he raises an eyebrow and she smiles at it. Her look is strained, and her hands are busy scooping the insides out of potatoes and dropping them into a huge bowl. The counter is covered with ingredients, and it’s obvious she’s been at this for a while.
“It’s ok. I put it on. Ray never cared for them. Too poppy or something.” Her hands shook as she scooped out the next chunk of potato flesh, and the skin cracked in her hold. “Shit.” She dropped the whole thing and put her hands over her face. “Shit, shit, shit. What’s-oh god what’s-“
Sam was moving before he had time to consider whether she’d want it or not, instinct and training taking over. He’d been taught to look through lies, to see what lay beneath the thin veneer of civility people used to cover their darkest secrets, and it had served him well over the years. What he had taught himself though was to be Dean’s counterpoint, to know when things needed to be soft and gentle. He’d learned how to offer comfort, how to see despair, and how to soothe it as best as possible. It was something his brother was exceedingly bad at, and it let Sam fill a niche that would have otherwise been lacking in their emotionally restrained family unit.
Both his arms encased her, and he could smell the grief and misery rolling off her as she gripped his shirt in little hands and sobbed her fear into his chest. His hands moved mechanically over her back, slow and steady, gentle, and he let her cry it out before he started speaking. “Ok. Ok Morgan I got you. I got you now.”
When she finally spoke she sounded all of five years old. “I’m so scared. I’m so scared. What’s happening? I’m going crazy right? You and Dean aren’t here, and there’s no ghost, I’m just sitting in the living room and this is all in my imagination. Right?” There was hope there, but it was steeped in fear, and Sam couldn’t tell which answer she really wanted to believe, because she didn’t know either.
So he changed the subject, and that was a trick he knew from his father and brother. “What are you making?”
“Twice-“ her voice hitched and then she pulled back and rubbed viciously at her face, “twice-baked potato casserole. Enough cholesterol to kill lesser men.” It sounded like an old joke, and Sam offered a smile that she tremulously echoed.
“Sounds exactly like something Dean would adore. Is it one of Jensen’s favorites?”
She rolled her eyes and picked up the potato again, hands moving with precision and care.
“No. Jared. You may not be able to tell by the way he feels, but he’s a glutton like none I’ve ever seen before. It’s a crime against nature that he isn’t a thousand pounds.”
“I feel that way about Dean a lot.” He watches her mix the potatoes with cream and eggs, pour in cheeses and spices, and then she spoons the whole concoction into a casserole dish and sprinkles cheese on top before shoving it into the oven. Her eyes travel over the kitchen before settling somewhere a foot off of his face.
“Ray used to call this kitchen therapy. Said it was my way of dealing with stress that writing couldn’t work off. I would bake, a lot, and he would sit back and tell me that as much as he hated seeing me upset he loved the cookies.” There's this dreamy fond look on her face that makes Sam hurt and yearn, and he sips his coffee and looks out to the tree she indicated the night before.
"You loved him a lot," It's not quite the point he wants to get too, but he can make his way there slowly. He's used to circuitous conversations.
"Yeah. I really did. I can play the full widow and pull out pictures if you'd like. I've got enough of them." Her grin is sad when he glances, but her fingers only shake a little.
"I'd like that. A lot. So were you and Jensen-?" He cuts himself off and makes a hand gesture. Slowly Sam. Go slow.
Morgan raises one red eyebrow and then sets the timer. "No. Just friends. He’s not-it’s just not like that. He’s not into commitment and I’m so-" She makes a wobbly hand gesture and looks back into the dining room where a tall bookshelf stands next to another window.
Sam grabs a seat on the nook bench and listens to her dig through the bookshelf before she returns waving a giant photo album. She wasn't joking about the amount of pictures. Morgan's fingers are steady and her face blank again as she flips through to the front and points to the first picture. Her eyes aren't as dark, and she's a little heavier in it. The man standing next to her has one arm casually flung over her shoulders, and they're squinting into the sun behind the photographer. There's a smile that lurks on the corner of his lips, and her fingers are twined around his pants leg.
"I was eighteen. Working on my first book and my B.A. Ray was thirty-three. We met through a mutual friend, and I was in love with him two days later." She flips through pages. Pictures of them with groups of people, most in a small apartment filled with books and DVDs. She points people out every now and then but mostly she just lets Sam look and soak it in. The story is easy to follow. She gets thinner as the years go on, their clothes look just as cheap but the surroundings get a little fancier. Moving day to the house they're in now, book signing, wedding day. He sees the introduction of the two actors, sees a variety of things, and when it's done he breaks protocol and simply jumps to where he wants to be.
"About what you saw last night. I just-"
"You and Dean have known each other Biblically. It's ok Sam I got the memo." She took in his nonplussed expression for a long time and then leaned back in the nook's bench seat and rubbed at her eyes tiredly. "I told Dean and he didn't have the grace to deny it properly. Is this where you start pumping me for an opinion?"
Well she'd apparently given Dean one. It occurred to Sam this may be the only time in his life when he had a chance to ask someone. Plus she'd never be able to tell anyone they knew. So he nodded and watched her face carefully.
"I told Dean that I don't care. I don't. Whatever broke that dam, good for you. Or bad if it's going to be something you guys can't get over. Either way you deserve a little happiness I think."
Sam snorts once and then leans in and points to a picture of her slung over Ray's back with her mouth open in an eternal squeal. "We'll never be happy. That's not the way it goes for Winchesters."
"That's the most depressing goddamn thing I've ever heard you say." Morgan squints once at the picture before shutting the album. "I'm a widow at thirty and I'm still not that depressing. What does that say about you?"
"You didn't hear what he said. You didn't see his face. He was…it's never going to happen. He's got this crazy idea that I'm not old enough or informed enough to give consent, and when Dean gets like that there's no swaying him."
Morgan raises an eyebrow before tapping his shoulder. “It couldn’t be that bad. You guys say some heinous stuff to each other all the time. Did it top the ‘If I didn’t know you I’d want to hunt you’ moment?”
It’s hard sometimes to bridge the gap between reality and understanding, and Sam thought he knew that. For example, reality is that she has watched their lives play out on a television screen while she sipped a coke or ate popcorn or whatever. Understanding that she has witnessed the worst of Sam’s life, has taken in all of his sins and tragedies and can remember them in a way that is totally impersonal and forgiving, in a way Sam has no chance of doing, is a completely different thing. A thing that doesn’t hit him until this moment, when it feels like she’s punched the breath out of him.
“How did-what-you saw that?”
A look came over her face, and then she bit her lip and shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t even-Jesus I’m an idiot. Of course that would be terrible to mention. Look don’t listen to me, I’m not great with face to face interaction. It’s just not my thing. I didn’t mean anything by-“
“It was worse than that.” He thinks of the cold expression on Dean’s face. Eyes closed off and jaw tight as he cast that disapproving look, as he told Sam just how little it had meant with the worst words he could have possibly chosen.
Morgan’s eyes are sad and warm, but her face stays carefully composed and blank. “What did he say?”
“That it was a mistake. That the whole thing was the combination of my availability and alcohol. That I needed to act differently and put it behind us.”
Which is close, so goddamn close, to what actually was said. To be specific, Dean’s words had been “We messed up Sam, but we won’t do it again. You stop throwing yourself at me, and I’ll stop being a drunken idiot and taking it. We gotta put this behind us little brother. We can do that if you stop acting like a clingy one-night stand.”
Her lips twitch once, and then she stands and limps over to the fridge before pulling out a bottled water and offering him a second. He takes it, and watches her screw the cap off hers and drink long and deep.
“Can you forgive him?”
Sam has to consider that. Can he? Can he get over the part where even now Dean will only turn to him when desperation is involved? Can he forgive Dean for taking something that Sam knows meant everything to both of them and relegating it to the trash heap with every other casual fuck he’s ever had?
He doesn’t know. He honestly can’t tell, and that bothers him. Before he could say there wasn’t anything Dean could do that would make Sam consider not forgiving him. They’ve been through so much, let so much go, but this one hits too hard and too close. This one takes years of longing that Sam tried so hard to subdue or forget, to hide from Dean’s ever watchful gaze, and makes it the exact type of dirtybadwrong that Sam always knew it was. Showed him all his fears were stupidly true.
It’s the antithesis of Dean’s purpose really. His older brother has spent his entire life proving to Sam that his fears are unfounded, protecting him from injury, and generally trying to keep Sam safe and whole at all costs. It’s weird, it’s cataclysmically weird, for Dean to be the one to confirm Sam’s fears. For him to the thing Sam is afraid of. Maybe Sam played that role for Dean when he was fighting the demon blood, when he was traipsing around with Ruby making a general monster out of himself, but Dean has never done it to Sam.
So when his mouth moves he can’t stop himself from letting it pour out like pus from a wound. “I don’t know. I just can’t-it’s Dean you know? It’s Dean. I knew he’d be angsty over it. I knew that he’d bring up the line, and how important it was we stay on the righteous side of it. He’s spent his whole life so programmed from dad that he can’t get over that belief that I’m a baby that has to be held safe and sound against a cruel and unforgiving world. When I was little I loved that. Loved him for it. But it chafes after a while, and going to Stanford was supposed to help but it didn’t. It just screwed things up worse, and now here we are all these years later and I can’t figure out what I want or what he can give me. I know he kind of hates me for leading him down that road, but can he forgive me for it? And if he can will I forgive him? I don’t know.”
Morgan’s fingers rub at her chin for a second before she looks over her shoulder at the oven and the slowly building smell of melting cheese.
“Dean ever tell you about the dream walking epi-incident? About what he saw when you two were split up?”
The look Sam gives her is sufficient, her face says that, but he answers verbally anyway. “No. Dean’s never been good at necessary sharing and caring.”
She simply nods before starting to chew on the skin of her thumb. “Well, there was a scene in that, and he sort of faces off with himself. Except it’s not him it’s the version of him he sees coming down the road. It’s demon Dean, and the two of them get into it physically and verbally for a little bit. Anyway, it’s just a projection of his subconscious, and that means anything it says is what your brother believes right?”
Sam nods hesitantly. Doesn’t like the way this is going. Because he remembers the timelines, and he knows now what he didn’t know then. The knowledge Ruby gave his brother, and how Dean carried that sentence of damnation around silently until he finally cracked and let Sam promise to help him.
“The other him, the dark him, told him he was ‘daddy’s little blunt instrument’.” Sam gasps harshly, unable to stop himself, and Morgan nods. “Harshest fucking thing I ever heard anybody say about themselves. The point is, Dean believed that then. I can’t help but wonder if he still does. He had a revelation moment then, but that’s not the kind of mental scarring you just shrug off. So maybe, the first step to forgiving him is knowing that he’s not mad at you, he’s mad at himself.”
“You have a psych degree your biography didn’t mention?”
Morgan’s eyes glitter for a second, and Sam’s pretty sure that’s the look the actors have known for years. If Jensen Ackles is in love with her, it’s that look that would cause it.
“Nope. But I write a fair amount of dialogue, and I have pretty good character development. Lets me see deep into the human mind.”
With that she opened her laptop, and began to busily type. Conversation effectively ended, and Sam was pretty glad.
-----
When Dean finally joined him downstairs Morgan was outside in the sun with a cigarette in her fingers and her head turned away from them. Sam waited until Dean was fully in the kitchen and trying to inject coffee down his throat without the necessary civilities of swallowing or sipping.
“Dean. We need to talk. In those dreams Jensen is sending you is he giving you any hints?”
Dean’s jaw moved as hazy eyes traveled over the room and then settled on Sam’s face. He could see the way Dean was favoring the shoulder that got hurt the night before, and he wondered just how much pain Dean was carrying around, and what it would take to purge him of it.
“The phone. He’s been pretty damn insistent that there are answers on the phone, but I can’t get the damn thing unlocked.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully and then pointed to his skull. Or Jared’s skull. It was hard to keep up.
“I’ve been having dreams.” Dean collapsed across from him and raised an eyebrow so he would continue. “About Jared. Or from Jared. Anyway, the main thrust seems to be about marital difficulties Ray and Morgan were having.”
Dean looked out the window and grunted once. “Actors?”
“Yeah, but not directly. Ray had a sister that didn’t seem too fond of Morgan.”
“I think I-she mentioned the sister in the hospital. Said the woman was gonna hate her.”
Sam nodded, pieces of the puzzle struggling to get in line and together. “Maybe the haunting is the sister? We should ask if she’s still alive and terrorizing Morgan, or if she’s dead where she’s buried.”
His brother squinted both eyes thoughtfully and finished his coffee. “Not a bad plan Sammy. We’ll make a hunter of you yet.”
And Sam? Well he was a pretty reasonable guy, but that was sort of low and ugly. Sam had been hunting exclusively for years now, and he was pretty sure he’d paid his damn dues. After all, how many hunters could claim the sort of personal death toll as him, or how many times he’d saved the world, or how much bullshit he’d put up with from Dean? Honestly Sam was pretty sure at this point he needed to be nominated for sainthood.
As if Dean could read his mind, the little smile playing at the corner of his lips died and his eyes shuttered and swept off of Sam’s face and somewhere far away. “Lighten up bitch. It was a joke.”
Except it really wasn’t, and Sam knew that. “Maybe you should pick your jokes a little better.”
“Maybe you should lighten up.”
“Maybe you should face your issues so we can be friendly again.”
Dean’s lips pursed tight and angry and he slammed a fist into the table. “My issues? My issues at the moment are that we’re supposed to be saving that woman and you can only focus on that one mistake. My issues are that we have no idea if this will really get us back or what it means that our bodies are there and not occupied. My issues have to do with you thinking it’s ok to be more than brothers, because that shit is bad Sammy. It ain’t normal, and you know that. Tell me you know that.”
He stood and waved his hands once, passion bleeding into resignation. “I know you think it. I also know that doesn’t mean it’s relevant or true. It meant something. I saw you asshole, and I know that it meant something to you. It meant-Jesus Dean how can you do this? How can you pretend like this?”
Green eyes burned hotly, and fists clenched tight. “I’m not pretending anything Sammy. I’m being me, and me says you don’t fuck your little brother.”
“Oh yeah? Well me says-“
The timer went off, shrill and sudden, and then the door opened and Morgan came through and eyed both of them before grabbing a potholder and pulling the casserole out. She didn’t look at them when she spoke. “Awkward.”
-----
“There’s bacon in here.” It was the first thing that had been said in half an hour, and Sam jerked at the sound of it. It was hard to tell if Dean sounded more pleased or scandalized.
Morgan, for her part, simply stared at her plate as broke off another small bite before carefully lifting it. “Yes. About a pound.” She bit the cheesy concoction and chewed slowly.
Sam kind of wanted to scream. There was no way to play off the tension in the room. Dean could try, but this wasn’t something that would be buried, and that was ultimately their problem. Burying this would bury them.
But Dean would try, and Dean would keep trying until Sam gave up or they had one of their explosive fights that ended with Sam swearing he would leave for good and finding out, once again, that he couldn’t get away from his brother. That he couldn’t escape.
It was almost a relief when the light fixture crashed into the table.
Morgan’s scream cut over the sound of the crashing glass, and Sam was unable to get out of the bench fast enough to catch her before she’d stumbled out, twisted her bad knee, and crashed heavily into the fridge. The metal casing of the fixture swept forward dragging the casserole dish with it and slammed into the smooth white front of the fridge beside her head.
Sam was up then, hands slamming out and catching the table before it could move too and decapitate her. The shock of the wood slamming into his palms reverberated up his arms even as Dean was shouting his name, and then Sam was officially wrestling with a kitchen table.
It seemed like forever before Dean was there, shoving with him, and then his brother’s gruff voice broke over the chaotic sounds filling the brightly lit kitchen. “Morgan go, get out of the house!”
Sam watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw her roll over, watched the knee collapse on her and then she crawled out of the kitchen. He could hear other things in the house crashing and falling, but at the moment all he could think of was the adrenaline rush of pushing against the table, until he heard the outside door slam and the table went slack in his hands.
Beside him Dean breathed heavily, and then green eyes locked him in place even as Dean’s rough hands grabbed his and lifted them up to inspect them. Despite the fight they’d been having and all the tension Dean’s touch was gentle and tender. It reminded Sam of the beginning, of all the things that they weren’t supposed to think about, and then it was gone and Dean was leaving him in the kitchen. Sam followed, found Dean outside pulling Morgan up off the pavement of the patio and inspecting the fine cuts along her face and neck.
And was he surprised when she grabbed onto his brother and called him Jensen as she shook? When Dean simply rubbed her back and stayed silent? Not really.
----
For some reason it fell to Sam to pack Morgan’s clothes, and he was suspicious that if they weren’t still on a knife’s edge Dean would have called him a girl, and said that gave him permission to touch her underwear. For which Dean would have earned a massive punch, and Sam felt a little like punching Dean right about then.
When he finally finished he came out to see Dean standing in the driveway, plush lower lip trapped in between his teeth as Morgan sat curled in a blanket and shaking while she lit one cigarette off of another. She looked up at him, and her red-rimmed eyes were on the edge of hysteria. “I can’t-was it-“ she shook herself and drew up a little, “did you see it? Was it Ray?”
He threw the bag to Dean and his brother caught it easily. Sam wanted to be back home. He wanted to fight a troll, something known and easy, but that didn’t seem like it would be on the menu any time soon. Instead he was trapped here, in another man’s body, taking care of business for some actors, and hating his situation more with every moment. He took a knee beside her, reached out and plucked the cigarette from her fingers before extinguishing it in the ashtray, and then gently cupped her face. Neosporin shone where Dean had carefully applied it, and the tracks of dried tears stood out against her face amongst all the tiny red lines.
“I didn’t see. I’m sorry Morgan. We should have got you out of here last night. That was our oversight, but it won’t happen again. We’re going to hole you up nice and safe, and then Dean and I are going to figure this out and get rid of whatever is doing it. I promise you. We won’t let it hurt you again ok?”
She took several deep watery breaths, and then her smile came tremulous and unhappy. “I’m such a pansy. I’m sorry. If I was writing this I’d make myself strong and helpful, but I can’t handle-I just don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Sam brushed red hair back and thought about all the times they’d had people fall apart on them compared to the situations in which the victims handled having their entire world shattered with violence and anger. He almost preferred it this way. The other type of reaction…it always resulted in something bad. “No one expects you to do anything specific. You’re handling this really well. Believe me, I’m an expert. Now tell us where to drive you. A local hotel, some place you can hide out.”
Morgan let herself be carried to the SUV, and Dean drove while Sam sat in the back with her. She huddled low, pressed against his side, and shook the whole way. After she’d been settled into the motel room with her bad knee propped up carefully and swaddled in ice Sam made sure she had her phone at hand and was as comfortable as she could be. She muttered ominously when he offered her painkillers, but she ended up taking them obediently and letting herself be soothed by the sound of his voice.
When they got back into the Denali Dean’s face was grim and cold, and he backed out of the space before heading towards the turnpike. The GPS told them that the nearest occult store was over a half hour away, in the closest major city, and Dean drove with finality and purpose. The radio droned in the background, low and quiet, and Sam let his head rest against the seat as the road rumbled beneath them.
“We shoulda taken her out last night. Why the hell didn’t we take her out last night Sam? Rookie shit.”
In Sam’s head his response was delivered with perfect poise and grace. Well Dean, that’s because we’re in love with each other. Like brothers, but brothers who really want to taste each other’s skin, and that’s distracting us. I’m in love with you, but I can’t have you and it’s making me crazy. I’m tearing myself apart because all I can feel is you, and all I can hear is that goddamn line you left me with. That last blow where you basically told me I was the same as every bar slut you ever took home. For your part, the distraction is because you feel guilty about what we did, what you said, and how I’m reacting. You want to grab me up and cuddle me, you want to soothe me, and you can’t. So instead you went to Morgan in a desperate attempt to get that tenderness out of your system before you directed it the way you wanted to. Technically you’re suffering from cognitive dissonance.
What came out of his mouth sounded wrecked and exhausted. “I don’t know.”
----
The occult shop turned out to be much better stocked than Sam could have hoped for. The woman behind the counter was knowledgeable, friendly, and most importantly professional. Usually going somewhere with Dean made watching him flirt an unavoidable eventuality. Sam was grateful for the little things.
After their night together Dean has been kind enough, or torn up enough Sam wasn’t sure, to wait two nights before he got back on the horse. The end result though, had been a two month span that made Dean look like he was personally trying to outstrip Sodom and Gomorrah for the right of trashiest place in history. His brother came home every night reeking of so many different chemical scents and fluids Sam couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him most nights.
Dean was kind enough not to comment on Sam sleeping in the Impala. He’d give him that. And while it hurt, and it hurt worse than anything Sam could remember, it wasn’t something he hadn’t expected. Dean was reasserting his ability to be active with other people, enforcing his statement to Sam, and reassuring himself that it was a one-time thing. His brother’s coping mechanisms were fairly easy to predict.
He was dragged out of his memories by Dean parking in the wrap-around drive and eyeing the house suspiciously. “If that thing is so attack happy should we make the bags out here?”
“Probably the safest idea.” Something was nagging at the back of Sam’s head. Something he couldn’t pin down long enough to really remember or figure it out. Instead he worked over the almost second-nature process of creating the little wards against ghosts. When they were done they used the house key on Jensen’s ring to open the garage door and go through there. Two hammers to punch holes, and an iron bar as a weapon didn’t feel as complete or ready as Sam’s shotgun loaded with rock salt.
The house was old, the research he’d done placed its construction in the twenties, and that meant the walls were solidly built and harder to break into. The bill to fix the holes they’d be making would be kinda pricey, and the patch job he was planning on with putty wasn’t going to be much of a fix at all. It was going to look terrible too, and there wasn’t anything he could-
Sam stopped, hand poised backwards and held perfectly still as he stared at the fourth hole he’d made. It was the last room upstairs, and he could hear Dean banging away downstairs. Sam looked around the room, at the books that had fallen in the earlier attack and the rumpled sheets. It was the one lesson Dean had never taken from dad, making his own damn bed. Too dependent on the idea that they’d be leaving the motel and the maid could take care of their mess.
His mind jumped from one place to another, Dean’s habits, the books sprawled out, the distant banging, and then it clicked. Sam had punched four holes in the walls. Sam had placed three bags. The worst part of the whole process had been breaking through the thick old walls.
Nothing had put up even a bit of fight.
Sam jumps the last step and almost crashes into his brother. Dean’s got the hammer half-up and an eyebrow crawling into the region of his hairline. “What? It after you?”
There’s a half second where Sam wants to snap at Dean, because really? “Get Jensen’s phone and get in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”
And Dean? For once just goes along with it. Which makes Sam bitterly happy.
-----
It takes all of three seconds to type the name into the password slot and watch the phone’s home screen glow into life. Dean glances over once and manages to sound both harried and aggrieved. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I used her name.” He started with the text messages, and found only one in the inbox. Sent from someone simply named Horner, I found what you wanted and it should be in your inbox. I implore you to contact the police Mr. Ackles. If this information is correct your friend may be in serious trouble. If not the police may I suggest a good security firm?
“I tried her name Sam. What do you think I’m stupid?”
He bit his cheek and scrolled through options until he found the inbox. The actor left it logged in, and Sam was grateful even as he cursed at the volume of mail. It took a few seconds to find the email in question.
“No Dean, I think you used her maiden name, which is what she writes her books under. Her married name is Luludi.”
Dean’s fingers tap briskly on the wheel as he takes a turn in the Denali too tight and bumps over the curve. How much time has passed since they doped Morgan up and left her in the motel room? A half hour to get to the shop, a little less than that getting their ingredients, the stop at the diner, almost an hour back to her house, the assembly time and then all that wasted time putting holes in her walls. Four and a half, maybe five, and then the time it’ll take to get there.
“Luludi? Doesn’t sound…shit Sammy is that Rom?”
“Yep.” He scans through the beginning information, Horner talking about the investigation and what it took to find what he wanted and what it meant. Then he found the emails in question between Ray and his “old school” sister.
The information is basically what he expected, and he reads it as he talks to Dean. “All the ghost was doing before we showed up was driving her nuts Dean. Pushing her to suicide, but not attacking her. It was all too personal, and we were going in too many directions to notice that.” His lips tighten when he sees the email Horner collected from Dahlia to Marcus Vigelli, the crazy fan he’d read about in his research on Morgan’s attack. The one in which Dahlia tells him how to get into the house without being detected.
“And then it got nuts because it thought we were the actors and we were spending time with her?”
“No. The actors have been there on and off for the last year and that never set it off.” He flips to the end and sees conversations between Ray and Dahlia in which the dead man begs his sister to understand. To accept his decision to trust Morgan, and to not try anything. To not fall on the “old ways”. “It was after we started proving we were something that could stop it. When we started searching into what it was. The ghost knew we were close to figuring it out, and it got nervous. Tried to jump ahead instead of slowly making her do it herself. Jensen hired a private eye who found conversations between the sister and the guy that attacked Morgan, and Ray begging her not to do anything. Remember what Morgan said? About Ray insisting she cremate him?”
“Yeah. Thought that was just preference but…he must not of wanted his sister to use him against her if he died.”
Sam’s lips tightened and he found the last piece of evidence. Something that Horner didn’t understand, thought was simply driven by malice, but Sam got the implications all too well. Jensen must have understood it too. “But she paid for Vigelli’s funeral. So that the state wouldn’t cremate him. Which means the haunting isn’t-“
Dean’s fist struck the steering wheel as he turned into the town’s main drag and headed towards the edge of it and the motel they’d left Morgan vulnerable in. “Locked down to a location. It’s wherever the bitch wants it to be. How much Vicodin did we give her?”
“Enough to keep her asleep for at least six hours.” Sam closed the phone and rubbed his eyes. “Enough to keep her out of it if anyone showed up.”
And when they reached the motel room and found it empty, the door half open and the sheets dragged and blood spotted? Sam wasn’t surprised.
-----
Dean’s hands were fisted in his short hair, the muscle in his jaw ticking off as he held himself in a tight trembling line, and Sam watched him for a bit before he gripped his own knees. “Ok, let’s think about this. She wants to hurt her, and she knows we’re at the house. So the house is out. If she wants to make it personal and painful where would she go?”
His brother shakes his head and looks up to the ceiling. “Someplace with resonance, something she’d know why she was there and what she did. Someplace that’ll hurt her.”
Sam thinks of the pictures of Morgan leaning on Ray, eyes young and bright, happy and alive. All the years he’s been doing this, and it still amazes him how absolutely shitty and terrible human beings can be to each other. Dahlia’s hatred had achieved nothing but her beloved brother’s death. At least until now. Now when her hatred was so focused she would-
“The graveyard. She must have tried to use her brother first, and when it didn’t work she went with Vigelli. If she’s taking everything personally then Morgan switching out the coffins and denying her the use of her brother in her vengeance scheme must have made her crazy.”
“Er. Crazier.” Dean’s hands come down, and he flashes that proud smile Sam has always loved. The one that makes him feel a hundred feet tall and magical. “Good work Sammy. Let’s do this.”
The GPS easily finds the graveyard closest to Morgan’s house, and Dean drives like a maniac the whole way there. The winding and deserted back roads are pitch black and Sam manages to not yell at Dean to slow down when they come over the top of a hill and leave the ground for a short time. This car is too big for his usual antics, but Dean has no other way to act, and Sam has no interest in fighting again. Not now anyway.
Sam spends the ride assembling what little ordinance they have. A kitchen knife, the iron bar, and a bag of rock salt he grabbed from the garage. The car skids to a stop outside of the graveyard and Sam can see by the moonlight that this part of it is empty. It’s narrow, but it reaches far back from the road.
Dean catches his eye, nods towards the back and lifts the iron bar. They stay low, splitting across the width of the cemetery and keeping each other’s pace. Halfway back, when the road is distant enough that Sam’s fairly certain he wouldn’t hear a passing car; he hears a choked noise and a woman’s voice. She sounds older, slightly hysterical, and coldly accusatory.
“My baby brother. It is your fault he’s dead. He wanted so badly to believe in you, and he wouldn’t accept that his wife was a dirty whore.”
They take the next step, and there’s the sister. She’s got a skull in her hands, beringed fingers stroking it almost lovingly as the fully formed ghost holds Morgan against a tree by her throat. Morgan’s face is pale, and it’s hard to make out distinct features in the milky light. Her eyes are two dark smudges set into her face though, and Sam can see the way her mouth gapes open as she tries to breathe.
Sam’s on the side with the sister, and Dean’s closer to Morgan and the ghost. It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly if they had planned it. Which is why Sam immediately distrusts it.
Dean’s face says he agrees, but he counts down from three with his fingers before they break cover and lunge towards the tableau in front of them. Sam swings the knife, and misses his goal of the woman’s arm instead knocking against the skull, the sound of metal skittering along bone loud in the graveyard. Dean’s a little luckier, and when he swings the bar it temporarily scatters the ghost’s essence even as his brother catches the author and holds her up.
Dahlia’s hands fly upwards, and she thrusts the skull at Sam angrily. He’s flying backwards before he has a chance to do anything about it, breath driven out of him by the hard granite headstone that hits him in the back. Dahlia lets out a wordless scream of rage and points the skull at Dean. His brother’s hands drop off of Morgan as he goes flying and hits the tree at a wickedly diagonal angle before slamming into the ground. Sam fights to breathe even as he uses the tombstone to push himself up.
“You two. You thought you could come to my world and stop justice? You are mistaken.” In the moonlight the deep twist of Dahlia’s scowl and the burning hatred in her eyes are hideously highlighted.
Sam can hear Dean stirring, the rough gasps of Morgan on the ground a few feet from him, and the sound of leaves rattling like dry bones across the stones around him. He closes his eyes and tries to get control, to remember how to move his arms and draw deep lungfuls of oxygen. Feet crunch towards him, and Sam shifts his grip on the knife and waits. Takes his time with it. Then, when she’s standing over him and chuckling Sam shifts his grip on the knife and drives it through her ankle. There’s a burst of blood, a hideous wail, and the skull clatters to the ground beside his head. He’s staring into the dead murderer’s hollow eye sockets, and without Dahlia’s power pushing him the ghost flickers in and out of existence from his spot near where Dean has fallen.
Dahlia’s screams ring out over the ground, but Sam is already grabbing the skull from the ground and rolling onto his side even as he shouts, “Dean catch!”
It should be a long shot, shouldn’t work at all, but there’s a reason Sam loves his brother. When the pressure is on Dean never lets him down. The skull arcs, rolls in the air, and then Dean’s hand shoots over the top of a gravestone and catches the skull neatly.
The arm disappears and Dahlia tries to limp towards it. Her progress is seriously halted when Sam grabs her ankle and pulls, and then he’s lifting himself up with the help of the headstone he hit and stomping brutally on the ankle he put the knife through. Now her screams are muffled by the ground beneath her face, and Sam stagger-steps ahead and reaches for Morgan even as Dahlia scrambles to grab at his pants. She can’t get a hold though, and Sam has a destination.
Morgan’s still gasping, fingers digging in the dirt, and Sam can see now how glazed her eyes still are, and how slack her mouth is around her desperate attempts for air. He sweeps her up, and then heads for Dean. His brother is almost to the car when it hits him, and he shouts ahead, “Dean! Gas?”
Small fingers tug at his shirt, and Sam finds a way to bend down towards her mouth even as he lopes with an awkward gait over the ground. “Li-lighter-fluid.”
Gas was the least of their worries, the actors don’t carry lighters, but Morgan has a Zippo. Sam shifts her carefully and finds her pockets before digging in them. The lighter drops into his hands, and he’s already flipping it open and deconstructing it as he finally reaches Dean. His brother holds the skull out, and Sam pulls the cartridge free and squeezes the cotton. They need enough to get the skull burning, and he can see the salt granules Dean has already poured, but there has to be some leftover for the lighter to work.
Vigelli is still flickering, following them with his mouth open in a soundless wail, and Dahlia’s stumbling steps are crashing closer as she screams vehement hate at them. Sam passes the lighter off to Dean and he drops the skull onto the ground and then reconstructs the lighter before striking the wheel once, twice, and then Sam’s breath whooshes out when the wick catches and the skull starts to burn merrily. The ghost blows into pieces and light, and Dahlia’s scream is unearthly and terrifying.
----
It’s bizarre to be standing in a cemetery and having a civil conversation with a police officer. Morgan’s on the back of the ambulance, the EMT flashing the light in her eyes and checking over her throat. Dahlia has already been carted off, screaming the whole way, and Sam shifts carefully and rubs at his lower back while Dean keeps shooting him glances Sam can read all too well.
“So Ms. Luludi took Morgan out here to kill her because of a vendetta about Ray?” The sheriff looks over at Morgan for a moment and then shakes his head. “Other than you two I’d say that girl doesn’t have any kind of luck but bad.”
Sam manages a careful smile. “Well we try. Is that all you needed?”
The sheriff slips his notebook away and holds out a hand that Sam is glad to shake. This may be weird, but it’s a good kind of weird. “Obviously I’ll need you boys to come in tomorrow and give a statement at the office. Plus testimony when it goes to trial, but that’ll be a while. In the meantime, will you look after her? I knew her mom really well. Breaks my heart to see her so shaken up.”
“We’ll take care of her.” The sheriff gives Dean a knowing look, and then goes back to where his officers are taking pictures of the crime scene.
----
After Morgan is cleared to go home, with more painkillers in her system than before, Sam rides in the back again and feels the almost insubstantial weight of her snoring into his side. She wakes up when they get to the house, and blearily tries to help when Sam lifts her out of the backseat and carries her towards the house.
He pours her a glass of water and watches as she sips at it slowly and stares at them. When it’s done she rasps out a low whisper. “I know we got off to a rough start with the bat and all, but thank you guys. So much. You saved my life and my sanity, and-thank you.” Her eyes are full of tears, and Sam submits himself to another hug. When he steps back she rubs at her face sleepily before swallowing delicately. “Will you still be here when I wake up?”
“I don’t think so Morgan. I’m pretty sure we’ve done what we were summoned for.”
“But you’ll be ok. You’ve got Jensen and Jared, and they obviously care about you a whole lot. You’re gonna be just fine sweetheart.”
She nods once and then gestures for Dean. His brother leans in close, and Morgan whispers something in his ear that Sam can’t hear. From this angle Dean’s face is hidden, but the line in his brother’s shoulders suggests that whatever he’s hearing he doesn’t particularly care for it. When Dean pulls back she points an admonishing finger and gives a weak and crooked grin. “Remember that ok?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Sam puts her to bed, and then looks around the wreckage of the kitchen before digging in the cabinet with the trashcan for the broom and dustpan. He finds everything he needs and starts sweeping up even as Dean studies him from across the kitchen.
“You did really good today Sammy. Figured it all out just in time.”
He doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to see the expression that goes with that heavy tone. “Thank you Dean.” It’s so formal, and he hates it. Hates everything. The glass crashes into the trashcan and then Sam puts everything back and stretches out his sore back. “Let’s go to bed.”
And they do. When they wake up in the motel room in Louisiana Sam isn’t sure if he’s relieved or sorry. He just tries not to think about it.
