Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story pertaining to the television series Supernatural are the property of CW and its affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Behind Closed Doors
Sam tried to focus his thoughts on one particular goal, but couldn't find a suitable starting point for his efforts. The vision passed through his mind again and again, filling him with the same helplessness and dread it had for the past two weeks it had plagued him. Fate, it seemed, had a funny way of showing itself to him. The more he unraveled the mysteries of his existence, the more cluttered they became, almost as if the forces of the universe didn't want him to ever decode the puzzle, at least, not until it was too late for anything to be done about it.
He silently berated himself for not having linked her to his visions in the first place. James Sullivan had stood a mere three feet in front of him, stared directly into his eyes, and he never once thought that she might have a connection to all this. With all he had seen, done, and concluded about his abilities, he should have guessed that he shared some kind of bond with her. Their mothers had, presumably, met the exact same end as one another in much the same manner. Not to mention her arsenal of psychic power, a common trigger for his freakish nightmares and visions whether the subject was telekinetic or not. After Max Miller, it was safe to assume that any and all of the demon's chosen children were bound to reap havoc on his overly sensitive abilities. Andrea Withers opening all his psychic floodgates should have been reason enough for him to suspect that some, if not all of his visions were directly related back to her.
Pacing the length of the motel room for the umpteenth time that night, Sam pondered one connection after another as he tried to fit the overly confusing puzzle together in an even vaguely coherent way. James Sullivan, his scantly clad dream girl, was going to be killed, in her home, by two guys with some kind of vendetta. He knew for certain it happened at night, during a horrible rainstorm, and that for the most part, she was home alone. No matter how uncertain he was of when it would happen, his instincts told him that it was coming soon, although it could just be his overwhelming sense of paranoia at the time. He was impatient and flustered, itching to take action against the inevitable.
"We have to do something," he said.
Dean rolled his eyes. If Sam had said it once, he'd said it a thousand times. "What the hell are we supposed to do?" he demanded. "Call her up? Sorry to bother you, but you're gonna get murdered? Have you even thought of how crazy that sounds, Sam?"
"People are going to kill her, Dean!"
"I get that, Sam. Jesus, I get it. I just don't know what the hell we can do about that right now."
"We could warn her? Hell, we could have done anything except driven away."
"And what? Wait around for her parents to come home?" Dean scoffed. "I would love to hear your explanation for that."
"She needs to know about this, Dean, about what's happening. She's one of these children, one of the demon's chosen. I'd say that kind of transcends explanation, wouldn't you?"
"Did you actually just use 'transcends' in casual conversation?"
The younger Winchester stopped dead in his tracks and shot his brother a most unamused glare. "Stop changing the subject."
"Look, Sammy…"
"It's Sam."
Dean ignored him. "The case is done. Finished. We rescued the girl, killed the thing that took her, and now we've got more pressing shit to deal with! In less than twenty-four hours, the yellow-eyed demon's coming back to finish off someone else's mother and I would personally like to make sure that doesn't happen."
"Look, I get it, okay? I get that this hunt is important."
"Do you, Sam? Because I don't think you do, considering all you've wanted to since we got here is investigate Catholic school girls."
"And you think there's a problem with that?" Sam raised a brow. "We just got ambushed by a giant, regenerative snake. Not to mention the homicidal psychic in the forest and the other homicidal psychics at the warehouse; all of whom implicated that Catholic school as a demonic headquarters right here in Boston."
"Alright, so there something is going on, okay?" Dean snapped. "But that doesn't mean we drop everything to look into it! Right now there's only one thing I care about, and that's getting the thing that killed mom!"
"She deserves to know, Dean!"
"Fine. Call her up. But from now on, we're only focusing on the yellow-eyed bastard."
"Dean…"
"End of story, Sam!" the older Winchester spat, tossing the duffel bag to the floor angrily. He swore his younger brother was pouting now, the fighting spirit knocked out from under him by his brother's cynicism. Dean, though, didn't really see why the kid was getting so upset anyways. From what he knew about his brother's visions, it was raining when this woman – James or otherwise – was killed. That night, the sky was clear, and Dean had better things to deal with. The call of his family's duty was too loud to be ignored this time, and unless a freak rain storm popped out of nowhere within the next few hours, he was going to have a Sullivan-free night with only the demon to worry about.
The younger Winchester dropped onto his bed, dropping his head to his chest for a moment in order to calm his racing heart. This situation couldn't be more infuriating if James were actually dying. It was clear that Dean wasn't going to listen to him anymore. And he could see why. In less than twenty-four hours this lifelong hunt that they had been on could be over. They could avenge their Jess, their mother, and the mothers of all the children the bastard had killed over the years. The war they had been so unwillingly dragged into as children would finally be over. He could go back to Law school and start over, leaving Dean to do God-knows-what with all his free time. The elder hunter might even think about settling down himself instead of just joking about it all the time.
But Sam couldn't shake the sense of duty that came with every single one of his visions. Every time he saw a person die he formed an immediate pact with them. The urge to protect was overwhelming, and he understood it as a way to make amends at last for those he had failed to protect before – like Max. Like Jess.
Jess.
He turned his head to look at Dean, translating all his anger into a scowl that went unnoticed by the elder Winchester. He was too busy procuring his precious hunting knife from the duffel to be shoved under the pillow for an unnecessary amount of protection. Sam watched him with rage filled eyes, trying and failing to justify his brother's callousness.
Well, that was until he saw the knife his brother was holding. Then his expression softened and his eyes cleared as a rush of déjà vu ran through him for the second time that knife.
"Dean…"
"I'm serious, Sam," his brother said irritably.
"No, Dean," he stood from the bed and walked over. "Let me see that for a sec."
The older Winchester cocked a brow, looking up at the looming form of his brother skeptically before offering up the knife. He figured Sammy wasn't looking to pick a fight by mocking his cautious behaviour. In fact, the kid wasn't really looking. His eyes drifted over the blade and then through it, pondering the weapon's secrets in absolute, chilling silence.
"What?" Dean asked, but received no response. Sam lifted his gaze, still off in his own little world.
"I didn't do it," James's voice begged him desperately in the vision. "I swear to God."
A hand gripped her hair so tightly he could hear her scalp tearing underneath. She stared madly into her attackers' eyes begging them with her mind to please, please let her go. The muscles in her face tightened suddenly though, as a knife was suddenly brought into view, rising out of the darkness to the foreground, suspended in the white-knuckled grip of her future killer.
Sam's heart nearly jumped out of his chest when he saw it. Floating in his mind's eye, hovering mere inches from James Sullivan's throat was his brother's hunting knife.
His sinuses exploded with pain, but Sam was too busy considering the implications of this new vision to be concerned with pain. He watched as his point of reference changed, and his psychic world spun on the crossguard of the knife to face the killer in the eyes.
A cold shiver ran down his spine as he stared at his own face through the darkness, just before it was splattered with blood.
Dean hated silence. He made a mental note to personally kill any and all Supreme Deities who decreed that sound should, for some reason, stop. Sound was good. Sound was dandy. Sound was life. Sound kept Sam from staring dejectedly at the floor, feeling like absolute crap.
He knew he had been saying it a lot lately, but this really was the last thing he needed. Psycho-homicidal-psychics? Stepping stones. Regenerating snake demons? Mild irritations. Sammy finding out he might be a murderer? Perfect. Just fucking perfect. Dean could take care of all the killer psychics and snake demons. He couldn't kill Sam's guilty conscience. Lord knows, he had tried. After Jess's death and Max's leap to the dark side, he, being the awesome big brother that he was, had done everything within his power to get the kid back on his feet. But for some reason, moments like these showed up and taught Dean two things: one – Sam wasn't back on his feet. Far from it. He hadn't gotten back on his feet since Jess got killed. And two – he really was just over-compensating with all the 'awesome big brother' bullshit. With all the demon hunting – or lack thereof, he thought with a groan, child rescuing, and magically blossoming psychic abilities, he hadn't really focused on his baby brother's wellbeing, least of all when it came to the comparisons developing between Sam and the rest of the killer psychics they had met. Good big brothers wouldn't have allowed Andrea Withers to scramble all his brother's brain cells both normal and abnormal. Hell, just because he was on the subject, why not go back to the beginning? Good big brothers didn't drag their baby brothers around the country on a road trip from hell just because he wanted to reclaim some idea of family.
"Stop blaming yourself," Sam muttered. His brother's guilty conscience was like a chainsaw against his skull, one he really didn't need. The recent visions had been damn near crippling compared to the others. His entire body was wrecked with shivers, ones he had to hide by curling up into a verifiable ball and holding himself tightly. Dean was shocked by Sam's attempt at discretion and if the situation were different, it might also be laughable. The more the kid tried to hide his discomfort, the more it seemed to show. Especially since Sam was convulsing under a sweatshirt in a room that was almost eighty degrees.
"Get out of my head, psychic boy," Dean retorted, unable to think of anything else to say. Something told him, "Well, at least you know when James is gonna die now," was definitely not the thing to say. He settled for a, "You can't blame yourself for this, Sam. You haven't done anything yet."
"But I'm going to do it," the younger Winchester admitted quietly.
"You barely know the girl, Sam! You were severely concussed when you met her. And now suddenly, you're convinced that you're gonna kill her all because some freaky vision said so?"
"When have my visions ever been wrong, Dean?" Sam's anger was boiling to the surface. Dean could feel the frustration coming off of him in shaky waves, a bit disconcerting given his brother's deteriorating physical condition. "This is coming, I mean…I am going to kill someone. I'm going to…"
Be sick? Dean wanted to suggest. The colour had just drained from Sam's face so suddenly he thought maybe the kid was having a fit. His baby brother swallowed hard and furrowed his brow, suddenly very disoriented.
The younger Winchester's body slumped forward, torso propped up on shaking limbs. He closed his eyes tightly against the cold onslaught of reality and was left with only the darkness of his thoughts where giant, fluorescent letters burned, "You're a murderer," into his psyche. His guilty conscience snowballed and overtook his shuddering form with ease as he focused all his thoughts onto that singular image of his own blood spattered face and the knife in his hand.
Why Sam?
Jessica's accusing tone sent shivers down his spine, and knocked him out of his reverie. When he finally opened his eyes, Dean was standing right in front of him, one hand on Sam's shoulder while the other tugged back the covers on the bed.
"Bedtime, Sammy," Dean said.
"Dean..." the younger man interjected impatiently. "I can't just…"
"Yeah you can," his older brother assured him.
"I'm going to kill her, Dean."
"Not on my watch," the pressure on his shoulder increased until Sam started to fall to the side. His overtaxed body keeled quickly under the touch, and before he could voice even a moan of protest, Dean had him lying flat on the bed with his legs soon to follow.
The change of altitude was nice, comforting even. Sam's eyelids drooped and his arms shot up and around the pillow reflexively, hugging it hard against his body in a last stand against the brutal unfairness of his condition. He should be stronger than this. What good were powers when you couldn't even use them to help people?
Dean pulled the blankets over his brother a laid a comforting hand on Sam's shoulder. "Go to sleep, Sammy," he urged desperately.
Sam didn't even bother questioning the order or the nickname. He was already asleep by the time Dean took away his hand and retreated back to the opposite bed.
There was a knock on the door.
Dean jerked out slumber, lifting his head off the pillow with a strange expression. The muscles in his face had stopped working as he slept, leaving certain ones in a permanent grimace and others relaxed. Running hand over his cheek, he eased himself up and off the bed, scanning the room instinctively to make sure everything was as he left it. Sure enough, his father's journal and several papers were scattered over the bed, while the laptop remained open to a screensaver on the opposite side of the bed. Sam was still sleeping off his most recent bought of angst without any interruptions – which was strange, admittedly, but Dean wasn't going to punch the gift horse in the mouth. The kid would need his sleep for tonight.
His train of thought was broken by another series of knocks on the door, this time louder. It had better not be the manager, he thought. I paid that sonofabitch till the end of the week.
Taking the knife out from under his pillow, Dean walked over to the door, keeping as quiet as he could. Sliding up to the peephole, he peered out, expecting to find the manager or worse waiting for him.
Instead, he sighed, flicked open the chain lock, and opened the door.
"We need to talk," James said.
Dean groaned audibly. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Hmmm…you came to my house last night coincidentally just as my kidnapped sister's returned home. Now what in God's name could I be doing outside your motel room the following morning?"
"You could be showing your gratitude," he suggested wolfishly.
Oh, if looks could kill. James glowered irritably, not in the mood for any sort of sarcasm besides her own. "Who the hell are you two? Seriously. Because you're not cops and you're certainly not two stupid kids target shooting on private property."
"You know that for a fact?" Dean suggested.
"Do I have to? I think it's pretty obvious," she stated simply, crossing her arms for extra effect. "Do you save little girls for a living or is it just some freakish hobby of yours?"
"I wouldn't exactly call it a living. Course I wouldn't call it a hobby neither."
"So what is it then? A passing fancy? Just something you're trying out?"
"Why? Are you impressed?"
That caught her off-guard, and it was beautiful. James' cheeks flushed with the most subtle of blushes, one you could only see standing as close to her as Dean was. The morning sunlight struck the side of her face and there it was: this sweep of pink over her cheek. And even though it was gone in a second, he absorbed the glory of making her blood warm in any way, shape or form.
"You saved my sister," she said, her voice growing quiet as the conversation took a more personal turn, "And then you just leave. You don't wait around to reap the rewards: you just disappear again, like it never happened. No one is that thankless unless they don't want to be found."
"Wow," Dean said. "That's deep. I need to get that embroidered on a pillow."
"Does anything other than bullshit ever come out of your mouth?"
"You want to find out?"
She rolled her eyes and scoffed, but Dean could tell that she was entertaining the notion – or maybe that was just his ego talking. "Look," he began, "Sweetheart..."
"James," she corrected him, but he ignored her.
"Your sister's home. She's safe, she's alive, all that good stuff. Go home and be with her, okay?"
"Wow," she smiled and nodded. "That was inspiring. You should give motivational speaking a try after this whole 'Private Investigator' phase dies out."
Dean's whole body went into a state of permanent chemical reaction. On one level it was sickening. The swirling hormones racing around his system left him vaguely nauseous. Not to mention the inappropriate timing of this little infatuation. He had a brother to help and a demon to kill. But that didn't stop him from imagining what he could do to James with ten minutes and a dark room.
He opened his mouth to get rid of her, when James went suddenly rigid. She glanced over her shoulder fearfully, scanning one end of the street and the other when her eyes came to fall upon a single jet black car that had only just pulled around the corner.
"Shit," she cursed, and pushed her way into the motel room, past Dean.
"What the…?" he began, but never got the chance to finish.
"Close the door," James told him, and when he didn't do it immediately, she ripped off one of her gloves. The door slammed shut pretty quickly after that.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, but didn't receive an answer. James was too busy peering through a thin crack in the curtains, eyeing the black car cautiously as it made its way down the street.
When it was out of sight, she breathed a sigh of relief and turned back around to face him. Dean seemed to tower over her suddenly, and she didn't blame him, considering she had just invaded his personal space rather unceremoniously. She tried to look impassive on the whole issue, but only managed to look uncomfortable with their proximity.
She opened her mouth to say something when the figure on the bed moved. Her eyes drifted over Dean's shoulder to the elongated figure fighting its way out from under the blankets, and her curiosity called the elder Winchester's eyes to the same sight.
"Sammy?" he asked.
"It's Sam," his baby brother replied, pushing the rest of the blankets from him and directing his line of vision to his brother's voice. He cocked a brow in confusion when he found that he and Dean weren't alone.
"You guys want some privacy or something?" he asked the two of them. A pair of stern glares was his only answer.
Sam Winchester stared at his reflection long and hard in the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out whether he was kidding himself or not. He blinked once and decided yes, he was. The circumstances were dire, the stakes were high, and he had deluded himself into a false sense of security. He was no more equipped to handle James' murder than he was to actually murder her. A second blink signaled 'no' in his mind, and gave him mild comfort. He wasn't kidding himself. He was strong enough to hold back his own darkness, and even if he wasn't, Dean was always there to help.
You can't keep depending on him, Sam told himself. After all, there were two people in the vision, and Sam was willing to bet lives that second individual was Dean, watching from the sidelines as his baby brother who he had sworn to protect became a murderer.
His stomach churned sickeningly as he was torn between the two sides of his conscience. On the one hand, he knew he wasn't kidding himself: Dean protected him. He always had, he always would. There was no question about it, not when the elder man pitted himself between Sam and the dangers of the world with no care or concern for his own existence. Yet a chilling notion tugged at Sam's senses as he watched himself in the mirror, one that he knew he didn't have the strength to face alone, but didn't see any other choice in the matter. Dean couldn't protect him from his destiny and if the demon was right, this was his destiny: to be a killer; a cold hearted killer.
"Hey," Dean knocked twice on the slightly ajar door before slumping against the frame. "You feeling better, college boy?"
"What is she doing here, Dean?" Sam asked.
"Dude, it's me. Why do you think she's here?" his little brother's flat expression got even flatter, if that were possible. Dean lowered his voice. "I don't know bro. She just showed up here."
"Well how did she find us? Did she say?"
"Why the hell does it matter, Sam? She found us, end of story. Now, she's going to have to un-find us so we can get back to work."
Sam peeked out the bathroom door. James was seated calmly at their dining table, head balanced in her hand as she waited out the brothers' quiet conversation. Her eyes darted to Sam's for a split second and would have lingered if the younger Winchester hadn't gotten self-conscious and drifted back into the bathroom.
"I think this involves her, Dean."
"I think you want this to involve her," Dean said, surprised of his brother's sudden change in mood. "Back off, college boy, I saw her first."
"No, that's not it," Sam beseeched him. He knew Dean was just kidding…kind of. "I think she's got more to do with the Order…"
"Oh, Jesus, Sam – not again."
"No, seriously, Dean! I think these women are involved in the same war we are, maybe even more so. The demon said he had plans for us. Maybe these are part of his plans?"
"What? A Catholic School, Sam?"
"It would be the perfect cover!"
Dean pushed his way into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. "This is crazy, Sam!"
"Listen to me, Dean…"
"No, you listen," he snapped. "This demon is the only thing I care about! It's all I've been caring about since mom died! And tonight…" Dean choked on his words. He couldn't breathe. The walls of the bathroom were crushing him, tightening as time ticked closer and closer to the Winchester family's private eleventh hour. Balling his hands into fists, making sure the nails dug into his palms, he dragged himself away from the apprehension and finished speaking. "I'm not going to let this bastard kill anybody else, Sam. This ends tonight."
Sam maintained composure, even though his brother's words had hurt him. Underneath Dean's determination lay an unspoken fear he tried his hardest to hide, one that cut his brother deeply because it questioned even his dedication to the cause. He had been raised to believe that the yellow-eyed demon was all that mattered. It was the only reason the Winchester men breathed. Perhaps it was the fact that he had never met Mary Winchester or maybe he was just as his father had said he was - selfish to the core. Either way, Sam couldn't agree with Dean. Yes, the demon had consumed his every thought from birth, but only because the image had been drilled into his head from day one. Sam hated to admit it, but deep down he couldn't understand his father and his brother's obsession with killing the thing, especially when there were other lives on the line.
"I want to kill this thing as much as you do, Dean," he said calmly, "But there are other lives at stake here and I can't abandon that; not with what my destiny is."
His older brother sighed. "So that's what this is about? You really think you're gonna go evil, Sam? That all this demon wants is for you to take down one of your own kind?"
"I didn't say that…"
"You're thinking it," the elder man stated with a groan. "Jesus, Sam, if this demon wanted you to kill her, why didn't it get you to do it before? You had plenty of opportunities to do it back at the Withers' place."
"There's something about that night, Dean, the night when it actually happens. I don't know," Sam's eyes went unfocused and hazy as he thought hard on the vision itself. The fragments of his dreams streamed out of order, like grains of sand through his tightening grasp, unable to be formulated in any coherent order. "Something happened…is going to happen that gives me motive…I think…"
Dean looked even less convinced of Sam's argument than he had before the kid had tried to defend it. He crossed his arms, cocked a brow, considered tearing his baby brother's theory to shreds one more time before opting not to. Sam had taken enough of a beating and even someone as relentlessly guilty as him had to understand that what he was saying was ludicrous on some level. The older Winchester got off the offensive and took a moment to relax.
"We gotta get to that hospital," he commented.
"Dean, we've got plenty of time."
"What the hell clock are you living on, college boy? We have no time."
"Dean," the younger man repeated, more forcefully this time. "All I need to do is…"
"Oh hell no, Miss Cleo. No way in hell you're touching anything else."
His baby brother groaned and Dean held up a warning finger. "No."
"Dean…"
"No!"
"You're so immature."
"Immature? Yes. Letting you touch shit? No fucking way," Dean slumped back against the wall, satisfied that he had won the argument. Sam shot him a dirty look, about to shoot down his point of view with some kind of polysyllabic rebuttal when they were interrupted.
"You do realize that the walls aren't that thick, right guys?"
The two shared a look, eyes going wide. Both had forgotten about their third wheel once the door closed, assuming that the bathroom would block out their voices. They hadn't been speaking very loudly to begin with.
When the initial shock of James' involvement wore off, they made their way to the door and opened it, shooting disbelieving stares in her direction. She put on a sugar-sweet smile and waved to them from the table, eyes glinting with the words, "I know absolutely everything you idiots just said."
"How about you guys come out of the bathroom now?" she said, her smile fading.
Author's Notes: OH YEAH! Three weeks! This is a bit of a celebration for me. I haven't updated this story in anything less than a month since October, and now I've gotten this finished in three weeks.
The storyline is getting very thick. I realize that. And I apologize, considering most of the answers won't be coming for a bit. But I hope you'll all stick around for it! I know I'll still be here. A little redundant for me to point that out, methinks. See you next installment! Have an awesome day!