Chapter Text
The man stood in the doorway.
The light outside silhouetted his slim form, his posture that mimicked ease but carried with it a tense menace. His hand was wrapped around Jo’s arm. She stood frozen beside him, her eyes pleading with her mother to do something. She stood still like she dared not try to pull away, but like she wanted to.
The man’s face was a kaleidoscope of forms, shifting rapidly from one to the next, but his expression was visible, if not any individual features. He looked angry, but restrained; not overtly threatening, not yet. He was speaking to Ellen, who stood just inside of her rental house, where she’d been staying since the Roadhouse was destroyed. Her shotgun hung at her side, at the ready but not aimed. He was too close to Jo. There was nothing she could do.
Ellen said something inaudible, and the man released Jo’s arm. She ran to her mother, stepping behind her and keeping her eyes locked on the stranger as he spoke with her mother. His hands were slipped into the pockets of the long coat he wore, and he made no moves toward either woman, but everything about him spoke of danger.
And then, suddenly, still cycling rapidly through faces, he stopped speaking to Ellen. He paused, looked around, and then up.
Up. At Sam.
“How are you doing that?” he asked, frowning. Ignoring something that Ellen was saying, he turned fully to face Sam’s vantage point, pulling a silver instrument out of his pocket. The tip of it shone blue, and he pointed it up.
Sam felt—
Sam had never felt anything in a vision before. Not like this.
Sam felt a thrilling sensation in his stomach, like dropping down on a roller coaster.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” the man said, glancing down at the instrument in his hand. His eyebrows rose, and he looked back up. Sam could see a trace of a smile, and for just a split second his face stilled: spiky brown hair, rectangular glasses, wide brown eyes. “Oh,” he said, “that is interesting. Ellen, did you know the Winchester boy could do that?” He turned back to Ellen as if they were old friends, Sam apparently forgotten. Ellen reached out behind her to push Jo farther back.
Sam woke up.
Sam woke up gasping.
The motel room coalesced around him, filling in the space the vision had left with sensory perception...the damp smell of mildewed floorboards, the soft clicking of a laptop, the rough sheets against his arms. He struggled to even out his breathing and sit up, only to be hit by a final wave of sensory input: a sudden tsunami of pain as a migraine overwhelmed him. He groaned out loud and sank back onto the worn mattress, covering his eyes with his hands.
The clicking stopped. “Sammy?” Sam could hear the chair creak as Dean stood up, approaching him carefully. He tried to make a thumbs-up sign with the hand closest to Dean, but he wasn’t sure he entirely succeeded.
“Water,” he croaked, and heard the sounds of Dean rushing to the sink and filling up a glass. He experimented with cracking an eye open, and the light rushed in through his fingers, sending a lance of agony into his brain. He moaned.
“Woah, woah, hang tight,” Dean said, blessedly quietly. “Don’t move. Vision? Just make a noise if it was.”
Sam grunted what he hoped was an affirmative. A rustling in a bag followed, and then Dean’s hands were on his arm.
“I got water and some painkillers,” he said. “Take it slow.”
Sam obeyed gratefully, fumbling for the pills and the glass and bringing them slowly to his mouth. Then he pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, shoving viciously as though he could press the pain out through his eyes. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and waited.
When he finally was able to open his eyes without wanting to shove an ice pick through them, he saw Dean watching him, a worried crease between his brows.
“Bad one, huh?” Dean asked, his voice still soft. “Thought they were gone.”
Sam huffed a pained laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.” And it was the truth— he hadn’t had a vision since they’d killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon. It had been months of reprieve, all lost in an instant with this one. Now who knew. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“What was it?” Dean asked.
Sam struggled to an upright sitting position, then levered himself back against the headboard. Dean helped him down carefully, his eyes sharp and cautious.
“It was weird,” Sam said. Dean barked a laugh, and Sam smiled ruefully. “Yeah, obviously. It, um. I don’t— I don’t really know what happened, but we need to go to Ellen’s.”
Dean startled. “Ellen and Jo? Are they okay?” Sam nodded, tilting his head slowly to crack his neck and relieve some pressure. Dean settled just a little bit. “What did you see?”
Sam hesitated, trying to drag the words up out of the foggy, ethereal space his visions held in his mind. The sense memory of that sinking sensation in his gut as the creature held whatever that instrument was aloft, the keen knowing in its eyes as it looked up at Sam. The sharp curiosity.
“It, uh,” Sam began, clearing his throat. “I saw something, something that looked like a man. It wasn’t. It kept changing its face, its body. I must’ve seen almost a dozen different people, always men, but...like, young, old, tall, short, hair all different colors, in different clothes. I mean, I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up. He’d've been the whole line-up.”
Dean frowned pensively. “Shifter?”
Sam shook his head, then winced. “No. It was all happening while I watched. He was flickering through all the forms, I couldn’t— I couldn’t make any of them out too well. It was like a flip book, I saw the movement but none of the images clearly. Ellen was with this thing but I don’t get the feeling she saw it the same way.” He paused, took a deep breath, and continued: “He had Jo.”
Dean bolted out of his chair, staring at Sam for a moment and then grabbing his bag off of the floor. “You said they were all right,” he said accusingly. He grabbed Sam’s bag, too. “You gotta get up, man, I know it hurts. You can tell me the rest on the way, because we’re going. Now.”
Sam slipped carefully out of the bed, not arguing because Dean was right. Whatever this thing was, the look on Ellen’s face in the vision told him that the Harvelles were going to need backup. So he ignored the residual pain throbbing in his head and quickly grabbed the few other things that remained in the room, glad he’d fallen asleep in his clothes last night.
As they made their way out of the motel, Sam kept talking. “He wasn’t hurting her, Dean. He had her by the arm, like he was...I don’t know, scolding her.” He shut the door behind them and hurried after Dean, who was booking it toward the parking lot. He raised his voice to cover the distance his brother had put between them. “I think Ellen told him to let her go and he did. He didn’t look like he was going to hurt either one of them, and Ellen seemed to know who he was. She had her shotgun out.”
Dean threw his bag into the Impala and grabbed Sam’s away from him, throwing it in behind. “Yeah, well, maybe your freaky pay-per-view showed you the wrong clip,” he said darkly, slamming the back door and swinging himself into the driver’s seat. Sam quickly circled the car and slipped in next to his brother. “Maybe he started throwing down after your vision ended.”
Sam shrugged uncomfortably as Dean threw the car into gear and peeled out of the lot. He fastened his seatbelt and rubbed his temples, but didn’t say anything. After a too-long silence, Dean turned and looked at him. “Well? What happened after that? Was that it?”
You shouldn’t be able to do that .
Sam tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words.
Some of the anger drained from Dean’s face and was replaced by worry. He let off of the accelerator and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t,” he said. “Come on, Sammy. You can tell me, man. What happened next?”
Sam opened his mouth to answer and found the words failing him again. He shuddered, and watched as Dean's face darkened with tension.
“He, um.” Sam crossed his arms tightly, protectively, over his chest. He stared fixedly out the window, unable to meet his brother’s eyes. “The guy, the, uh, thing. He looked at me.”
Silence.
“He looked at you ,” Dean echoed flatly.
“And he talked to me,” Sam continued, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “In the vision. He asked me how I was doing it, I guess how I was seeing him. He said I shouldn’t be able to, and he asked Ellen if she knew about it. He knew who I was. He called me the Winchester boy.”
The steering wheel creaked under Dean’s vice grip on it. The car jerked to the right as Dean regained his equilibrium, but Sam didn’t do anything but grip the door handle. He knew in a place very deep inside of him that there was nowhere in the world safer than the Impala with Dean behind the wheel, and sure enough, Dean righted the car quickly. He stared at Sam, incredulous.
“Sammy, that ain’t possible,” he said.
Sam laughed hollowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“Is it?” Dean added, his voice a little less sure.
Sam shrugged. “Who knows. It shouldn’t be. When I’m having a vision I’m seeing the future. I’m not...I don’t think I’m there for it, not in any physical way. He shouldn’t have been able to see me, much less talk to me. But he did. And he knew my name, and he knew Ellen’s name, and...Dean, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. This is a new kind of weird.”
Dean shook his head slowly. “Like we need that,” he said. “But there’s no getting around it. We can’t let Ellen and Jo deal with this on their own. If that thing hurts them…”
“I know,” said Sam quietly.
They drove on in silence for a long while, the highway blank and featureless as it blurred past the windows. Sam rested his forehead on the cool glass, shutting his eyes and letting the rhythmic purr of the engine as it vibrated through the car lull him. When he opened his eyes he saw the middle-of-nowhere plains stretch out on all sides, and suddenly the immensity of their isolation hit Sam in a way that it rarely did anymore.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t been in this exact position, sitting shotgun as the Impala chewed up the miles on a lonely highway, countless times since they’d started on this stupid, horrible adventure. It wasn’t like anything about this was unfamiliar. But this time, as the stark landscape surrounded him, he felt not only exposed and vulnerable in the world beyond him, but he felt exposed and vulnerable inside of his own head.
He frowned at the thought, which had arisen of its own accord and seemingly out of nowhere. But he couldn’t shake it. His visions were always a vulnerable time for him, physically and mentally...he had no control over them, no way to escape them or predict them, and he was KO’d until he was able to recover from the physical pain. But this time it was beyond that. That creature had invaded his mind so easily, and Sam didn’t even know what he was. He could be anywhere, waiting for them at Ellen’s, hiding at some rest stop, waiting to appear just in front of the Impala, sending Sam and his brother careening off the road to pick through Sam’s brain in person.
Or, worse, maybe he didn’t need to. Worse, maybe the door was already open and this creature could stroll in at his leisure and take what he wanted. Sam, his mouth not asking his brain for permission, whispered, “He scares me, Dean.”
Dean didn’t turn, but he inhaled slowly and deeply, and shifted his hands nervously on the steering wheel. His face showed nothing but hardness, but Sam could see the concern underneath. “You don’t scare easy, Sam,” his brother said. “If you got a bad feeling about this, we need to be careful. What’s spooking you?”
Sam passed a hand over his head and reached under his seat for a dagger kept there. He took it out and gripped it, feeling its heft, its solidity. He felt better with a weapon in his hands. “I’m just getting this Big Bad vibe from him,” he replied. “He didn’t just see me, just talk to me. He...he affected me, Dean. While he was talking he pointed this tool at me, and I felt it, and Dean…” He laughed a little, but there was no humor in it. “If he’d wanted me to stay in the vision, I don’t think I could’ve left. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just know.”
Dean didn’t say anything to that, just drove on in silence. Sam turned back out the window as Kansas stretched out behind them and turned into Nebraska, fields and plains indistinguishable and uniform around them. The vision wouldn’t leave his mind, dancing at the edges of his eyes no matter where he looked or how he tried to divert his thoughts. Usually that first flush of horror that his visions left with him faded fairly quickly: the thought of going on the hunt, of taking on whatever monster he saw, helped him put it behind him. Whatever he’d seen, it was his job to go out and stop it, and that gave him purpose. But this time...this time it was different. The icy feeling in the pit of his stomach would not go away.
He kept thinking about that split second in which the creature’s face stilled and he could see it. It looked so human, but Sam knew down in his bones that it was not. Whatever it was it set Sam’s teeth on edge, it screamed predator , it triggered Sam’s deepest fight-or-flight. Mostly flight. And yet once he’d felt the thing’s eyes on him, he felt frozen. Trapped, trapped nowhere, but trapped wherever the creature wanted him to be.
Okay. This was useless. He shook his head— carefully, gently, still sick with the lingering throb in his head— and grabbed his father’s journal, rifling through it, hoping for something. Anything. Anything that might explain whatever this was. Vampires, werewolves, demons of all varieties, minor gods...all of them appeared in the journal. Everything they’d come up against so far, their father had either taught them about or left them clues about in the journal. But this seemed far beyond what twistedly passed as normal for the Winchesters.
This was a new paradigm, and the uncertainty of it churned in Sam’s stomach.
His reverie was broken as Dean shifted in his seat and grabbed his cell phone, glancing down for a moment and dialing. Sam looked over, and Dean said, hitting the speakerphone, “I’m calling them. If that thing is on its way Ellen needs a heads-up.” Sam nodded, settling back against the seat as the phone rang.
“ Hello. ” Sam almost wept at the sound of Ellen’s voice, calm and present, but he kept it together.
“Ellen, it’s Dean. Sam just had a vision, and you and Jo are in danger. Get out of the house now and we’ll meet you wherever you tell us to go.”
A long moment passed. The brothers looked at each other, unnerved. “Ellen?” Dean said. “You there?”
A small laugh. “ You said Sam had a vision about me and Jo? ” Ellen asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Now get out of there—”
“ Jo’s been missing for a week. ” Dean fell silent, and Sam stared at the phone. “ If Sam saw her back here, I’m not going anywhere. What did he see? ”
Dean shoved the phone toward Sam, his eyes distant as he stared out the windshield. Sam could see the storm brewing in him, and took the phone in fumbling hands. “Ellen, it’s Sam. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know what the thing was, but Jo was safe, I think. It was something you knew, whatever it was. Not human but it looked human. Its face and body kept changing, but I don’t know if you saw that, in the vision.”
He heard a sharp intake of breath. “ It looked like a man? Did you hear it speak? Did it sound British? ”
Sam frowned at Dean, who didn’t look at him. “Yeah. Yeah, he had a British accent. It did.” he corrected himself. “Ellen, do you know what this thing is?”
There was a silence over the phone for another moment. “ I’m not sure. But I have my guess. And if I’m right, and he’s coming, then the two of you are not safe. Don’t come here, boys. I’m not kidding.”
“Not gonna happen,” Dean snapped. “We are not leaving you alone with that thing. Whatever it is, we’ve seen worse, and we’re on our way with lots of firepower.”
“ Dean, you have not seen worse, and nothing you have in your trunk is gonna kill this thing, ” Ellen said, her voice firm. “ Believe me, boys, if it’s who I think it is, you are not ready to deal with something like this. ”
Dean started to argue, but Sam held up a hand. “Okay, Ellen,” he said, waving dismissively to cut off Dean’s protestations. “We’ll stay put. Call us in twenty-four hours to let us know you’re okay, all right? That vision felt pretty dark and I want to know this thing didn’t hurt you.”
Ellen paused, and then said, “ Okay, boys. I will. You stay safe. Sammy, if you get any more visions about that man, call me again. ” With that, she hung up.
“What the hell, Sammy?” Dean shouted. “We’ll stay put? What the hell are you thinking?”
“That arguing with her was pointless, but that it didn’t matter because there’s no way we’re turning around,” Sam replied in a flat voice. “Keep driving, idiot.”
Dean was silent for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Yeah, okay, Sammy. Good move. Now, here’s what’s bugging me. Ellen knew what the thing you saw was, but she didn’t want to say. If Ellen knew, no way Dad didn’t. So why isn’t there anything in the journal? Why didn’t he mention anything about this thing?”
“What’s bothering me is that Jo’s been missing for a week, and I see this thing hauling her into their house like he’s gonna ground her and take away her phone privileges,” Sam said. “Even if he was the one who kidnapped her to begin with, why would he bring her back home? Unharmed?”
“Maybe he wanted Ellen to watch him kill her,” Dean said grimly.
Sam shook his head. “No, I thought about that, too, but he just...let her go,” he said. “Ellen had her shotgun out and he didn’t hold on to his leverage. Why would he do that?”
Dean shrugged, his shoulders tight. “Don’t know. Can’t say I care about his motivation. What I want is to go in, waste this thing, get a drink, and forget this happened.”
Sam had no argument with that.
Morning started to turn to midday as Ellen’s neighborhood appeared on the horizon. The little town was quiet at this time of day, kids at school and adults at work, and Sam felt a foreboding shiver run down his spine. That foreboding, however, did not drown out the relief that he felt as they pulled up into Ellen’s driveway.
Dean parked and they walked up to the front door. Dean rapped impatiently, shouting, “Ellen? Open up!”
They heard footsteps and then the metallic sound of locks coming undone, and the door opened to reveal a very unhappy Ellen standing in front of them. She looked bedraggled, her clothes rumpled and dark circles under her eyes that spoke of a week of sleepless nights. She stared at them with a combination of disappointment, anger, and what Sam knew was a fear that bordered on terror. “I told you boys not to come,” she said.
“Couldn’t be helped,” Dean said with a winning smile, which lasted for a second and then dropped off his face as though it were never there. “Has it come yet?”
“No.” Ellen stepped aside, gesturing for them to enter. “Get in here fast. And I want you in the back. Sammy, what time of day was it in your vision?”
Sam peered out the window. “Looked about like this.”
“Any minute then,” Ellen murmured. She swept the yard once more with her eyes, then closed the door and locked it up tight. She then turned back to them, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “Stay in the back. No, I am not asking you, Dean Winchester, I am telling you . I don’t care what you hear, you stay in the back. I am not having you hurt, not in my house.”
“And I’m not letting that thing hurt you,” Dean retorted, pulling his pistol out from the back of his jeans.
Ellen stepped forward and put her hand on Dean’s wrist. He met her eyes, startled, and let her lower his arm to his side. “He won’t hurt me,” she said softly. Dean frowned, but put away the gun. “He won’t hurt Jo, either. But I can’t promise he won’t hurt the two of you. So promise me— promise me you won’t come out while he’s here.”
Sam could see the trembling in Ellen’s hands, the effort behind her proud, straight stance. The way her eyes kept flicking back to the door, waiting for a knock, waiting for their time to be up. He took a deep breath and said, “Ellen, what is this thing? What kind of demon is it?”
Ellen met his eyes for a moment, and he saw a struggle in her face. But then she looked away, looking years older all of a sudden. “Boys,” she said, “I wish I could tell you. But you are just not ready yet. You have to trust me. Everybody will be okay, as long as you hide.”
Dean stepped forward, argument in his eyes and on his lips, but Sam, still watching Ellen carefully, put his hand on his brother’s arm. “Okay, and I mean it this time,” he said. “We’ll stay back.”
“Sammy—” Dean started, but Sam shook his head. Dean quieted.
Ellen nodded, relief evident in her body. “Right. You get into the back. When he—”
They all stopped at a sound from outside, from the back yard: a sound like wind rushing and gears creaking. Ellen gasped, her face draining of color. “He’s here,” she said softly. “Get. Now. ”
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm, and together they rushed into the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind them. Sam crouched down next to the door and Dean sat beside him. They could still hear what was happening in the living room, could still run to Ellen’s aid if she needed it.
“This is nuts,” Dean hissed. “We can’t leave them out there with—”
“Ellen knows what she’s doing,” Sam whispered. “We have to trust her.”
Dean started to reply, but Sam shushed him as the locks began to click open. They waited in hushed silence and they heard the door creak, as well as the sound of Ellen’s shotgun as she readied it.
“Ah, Nebraska!” Sam sucked in a breath at the sound of that voice. “Never get much of a chance to visit Nebraska. Not a lot of call for my services here. But I do enjoy popping ‘round when I get the opportunity. Always good to see an old friend, isn’t it, Ellen?”
“Jo, are you all right?” Ellen asked her voice studiously even.
“I’m fine, Mom, I’m okay.” Jo’s voice trembled just the smallest bit.
“Funny story,” the creature said casually. “I found her in a warehouse a couple towns away, trying to hack the head off of a juvenile Blathereen! Had to smooth that over, get her out and get that poor Blathereen to safety. Probably shouldn’t let her out of your sight until you’re sure she’s not going to run off and provoke an incident .”
Sam and Dean locked eyes, and he saw that his brother heard it, too. The creature sounded breezy, flippant, but there was a dark undercurrent of anger running through his voice. It made the hair on Sam’s arms stand up.
“Let her go,” Ellen ordered.
“Course,” the creature said, and Sam could hear Jo’s footsteps as she ran behind her mother. The creature sighed. “Really, Ellen, a shotgun? You know how I feel about guns.”
“I do,” Ellen said shortly. “Makes me feel better, though. Might not kill you, but it’ll slow you down. I guess something got you, though: you got a new face.”
“Yes, I did!” The creature’s voice brightened, like he was flattered she’d noticed. “Bit of trouble aboard Satellite Five, but that’s a story for another time. Do you like it?”
Ellen snorted. “Very nice. Now get out.”
Sam held his breath— the idea of ordering this thing around made his stomach twist.
“You know I can’t. First of all, we need to have a talk about your daughter,” the creature said, his voice darkening again. “I’ve told you it’s too dangerous for her to hunt. That Blathereen did nothing to her, or anybody. They’re a harmless people, and I specifically told you to let me deal with any Slitheen you find. I am, by the way, doing you a kindness by assuming the only reason Joanna would have attacked that Blathereen is because she thought he was Slitheen.” There was a pregnant pause. “This would be a very different conversation, if I thought otherwise.”
“Don’t you threaten my daughter,” Ellen said, and Sam could hear the tension ringing in her voice. If he felt the creature’s anger, the darkness in his voice all the way from another room, he could only imagine how afraid Ellen must be.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” the creature said coldly. “I’m warning both of you. There’ve been innocent lives taken in this war of yours, and others are beginning to notice. Just like last time, Ellen. You don’t want that again, I promise you, and—” The creature’s voice stopped. So did Sam’s heart. “How are you doing that?”
“Who are you talking to?” Ellen demanded.
Sam reached out and gripped Dean’s arm. “This is my vision,” he breathed. “This is what he said to me. He’s looking at me now.”
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” the creature continued, sounding intrigued. A high-pitched buzzing sound filled the air, and then: “Oh, that is interesting . Ellen, did you know the Winchester boy could do that?”
A shuffling sound— Ellen pushing Jo further behind her, Sam remembered. “Do what?”
“No, he was just—nevermind. It’s not important.” The creature’s voice trailed off, sounding distracted, pensive.
“Why are you here?” Ellen demanded.
The creature laughed. “What, returning your daughter to you, safe as houses, and preventing a war with Raxacoricofallapatorious isn’t enough of a reason to stop by?” he asked. Ellen said nothing, and he sighed again. “Okay. You’re right, Ellen. I need to find John Winchester.”
Dean jumped like he’d been electrocuted, and Sam squeezed his arm.
Ellen laughed in a way that sounded like she’d been punched in the gut. “You need to recalibrate your ship, Doctor . John’s dead. You just missed him.”
Sam held his breath, but there was no sound for a long moment. Finally, the creature—the Doctor —said, his voice very quiet, “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Leave,” Ellen ordered.
“If he’s gone, I need to find his sons,” the Doctor said. “At least the eldest must be following in John’s footsteps, yes? He was a loyal boy.”
Sam snuck a look at Dean, who was glaring at the door and refused to meet his brother’s eyes.
“I don’t know where the Winchesters are,” Ellen said, just a little bit too quickly. Sam winced.
The Doctor didn’t say anything for a moment. “Ellen, lying is unbecoming,” he said finally, his voice soft and dangerous. Sam heard a few footsteps, and tensed because it was almost certainly the Doctor closing in on Ellen. He heard a shuffle, maybe Ellen backing away. He kept his grip on Dean’s arm to stop him from bursting out of the kitchen. The Doctor continued: “I’m trying to—oh. They’re here, aren’t they?”
“Doctor, you leave them alone,” Ellen cried, and Sam heard three sets of footsteps approaching the kitchen. He stumbled backwards and felt Dean pull him to his feet, then saw Dean pull the pistol out from behind him, gripping it tight.
The footfalls stopped at the door, and they heard the Doctor’s quiet voice. “I’m here to help, Ellen. I don’t want to see anyone hurt.” A silence fell, and then he said, “I understand why you’ve never trusted me. But it’s not too late to start.”
The door to the kitchen opened.
There he was, out of the hellish dreamscape of Sam’s vision and before him in the flesh. The face he’d seen for the split second, right in front of him. The Doctor was fully humanoid, tall and thin, wearing a blue pinstripe suit and a long brown overcoat, with red Converse sneakers, jarringly casual and human. Thick-rimmed rectangular glasses perched on his nose, and the silver instrument Sam had seen in his vision was still in the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor’s eyes were wide, focused right beyond Sam’s shoulder.
Sam took in a deep breath, bracing himself.
And Dean fired his gun at almost exactly the same moment that the Doctor depressed the button on his instrument.