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Sam’s first thought on waking was that Dean wasn’t there with him, and that was… that was significant, for some reason. His second thought was realising how much pain there was throbbing from his leg. And his jaw. And his wrist…
As he tried to sit himself up in what he now understood to be a hospital bed, he let out an involuntary groan as a stabs of pain rebounded inside his head, and a nurse rushed in to gently force him back down. At least she looked like a nurse. He wasn’t going to take that on faith though, not yet at least.
“Hey there, champ, don’t go sitting up yet, not sure you’re quite ready for that... I mean from what we can tell you hit your head pretty dang hard, along with just about everything else you got.”
Sam made the effort to smile flatly back at her. Briefly. “What… what happened?”
The nurse raised her eyebrows in what Sam felt was probably a little too much amusement. “Well, you tell us, kiddo.”
Kiddo. She was older than him, sure, but Sam hadn’t felt anything like a kiddo in a long time, and the word rang wrong.
“…Everything seems to suggest that someone dropped you out of a window, only there wasn’t really anything nearby you to drop you from really… so either you fell out of a plane, or the Hulk threw you from somewhere down the street.”
Sam choked out a forced, very false, laugh. The Hulk. Right. He could almost believe it.
“So uh… was anyone else there where… where I was found?”
The nurse shook her head. “Nobody else around looking hurt anyways. But we do have a nervous relative waiting downstairs for you if you’d like to see them?”
Sam tried, and this times succeeded marginally, sitting up again as he felt relief rush all through him for a moment. Dean.
Not dead. Not… gone, again. Dean was down there waiting and even if Sam couldn’t walk and he was still pretty sure from what he could remember that Dean was doing so great in the head, everything was going to turn out alright now. He wasn’t alone again, and Dean would tell him what had happened and where they could go from here, and everything would turn out alright, everything was going to be fine now…
He kept repeating that last thought as an urgent mantra until the nurse returned, as though by saying it often enough he could will Dean’s appearance, his own personal tulpa. Since he was at least believing in something, someone, that already existed, he felt like he didn’t have such a bad shot.
But when the nurse was back in the doorway it wasn’t his brother she so proudly presented to him, arm outstretched.
“Jody,” he managed. “How, wha-”
Jody smiled down at him, her eyes flashing wide in an unmistakable order for Sam to stop talking before she turned back to the nurse. “I think my husband’s still a little confused. Could we maybe have a few moments…?”
“Of course.”
The moment the nurse was out of the room Jody turned to look down at him, arms outstretched, looking about as bewildered as Sam felt. “The hell, Winchester? What happened to you? What happened to your brother?”
“Jody, I just woke up. Pretty sure with a bad case of concussion. So… slow down for me. What’s going on? Where are we?”
“A few small towns away from me. I called you guys yesterday about the case I was trying to handle – handled it, thanks for the back up – and when you guys never show I start checking out the police report trail. Heard they picked up a giant of a John Doe last night, came to look into it.” She narrowed her eyes at his blank expression. “So you don’t remember anything then?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “I think… I think I remember you calling, or, someone calling. But I think you might have called at a bad time, I think Dean was…” Sam swallowed. “Wasn’t… uh, feeling all that well.”
Jody lowered herself into the seat by his bed. “Sam. Dean was he… how’s he been?”
Sam didn’t want to try to think too hard about that. “I think he’d been… fine, I guess. Getting… getting worse. You know with the mark and all that… But see, he kept saying he was fine and then…” Maybe, Sam realised, maybe it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t able to remember what had happened, but that he didn’t want to.
“Sam, did Dean do this to you?”
For a moment Sam froze. But only for a moment. “No. No, if he’d gotten so bad to do something like this, he’d have… finished things off.” He made an effort to smile.
Jody breathed out slowly. “Somehow that’s not sounding all that comforting.”
“No,” Sam agreed, mind racing. Maybe Cas would know. Had Cas been there? Was he alright? He needed to try calling him, both of them…
“So husband, huh?”
Jody shrugged. “Next of kin rules, you know the drill. Doesn’t hurt the ego either, I think it makes me look more interesting.”
Sam snorted. “Well, you’re definitely interesting enough on your own.” He sighed with mock despondency. “Why does waking up and finding out I’m married always seems to happen when I’m injured, or about to get injured,” he muttered, glancing down at the leg he now registered as strung up in a cast.
“Vegas?”
“Sorta. There was a demon involved.”
“Usually is with you.”
Sam huffed a laugh, before sobering again. Right. If Bobby could help save the world in a wheelchair, then he could get out there and find his brother with only one working leg. “Jody could I use your phone to try calling Dean? I think mine’s gone.”
“I’ve already tried the number half a dozen times today. He’s not answering.”
“OK.” Sam breathed out slowly. “Then I’ll try calling some people who might know where he is,” he amended, stretching the hand that didn’t ache out in Jody’s direction.
“And I’ll let you do that after you’re back home. The doctor’s said they’d be happy releasing you into my care, but I obviously have a duty to look after you properly. So I’m not going to let you run off – hop off – on your own and go fight something when you’re not even sure what the something might be and you can’t even sit up on your own.”
“Jody-”
“If I left you here you’ll either run off on a crazy suicide mission, or, since you’re all helpless and out in public, some big scary monster’ll come along and take bites out of you when you’re sleeping. So you’re coming home with me where I can keep an eye on you. Alright mister?”
Sam couldn’t help quailing a little at the tone of her voice. “But Jody, if something is coming after me then I’ll put you – and Alex – in danger without being able to help.”
“What am I, Penelope Pitstop? You don’t have to be the big hero all the time, Sam. ‘Sides. Christmas is going to be tense enough with it being me and Alex’s first one together. Don’t make it worse by making me worry over you the whole damn time. Because you Winchesters are godawful at keeping in touch.”
Sam almost felt his mouth lift into a smile. “Christmas already, really?”
Jody rolled her eyes as she got back on her feet. “December 23rd today. Keep up coma man.”
Now Sam did smile. And as Jody reached the door he stuttered out her name.
“Thanks,” he managed as she turned to look back at him.
“That’s the other thing you boys need to get better at. Asking for help every once in a while. You have people who wanna help, don’t go forgettin’ about them,” she added as she left Sam smiling slightly to himself alone in the room.
*
Alex looked different to the last time Sam had seen her. Well, the last time he’d seen her, her eyes hadn’t been totally human, so there was improvement on that front at least. She looked… healthier, even if the all-black clothes made her seem a little sallow. She hadn’t acknowledged him with much more than a curt nod since Jody had brought her home, which, Sam supposed, was entirely fair. He and Dean might have killed her, last time they’d met. But somehow Jody was hoping he might be able to ‘get through to her’ anyway. Which sounded difficult. From what he remembered about being her age he hadn’t been all that easy to reach.
Not for the first time, Sam wondered whether his rebellious phase would have looked something different if he’d been born into a different family. Maybe he would have also gone around with twenty different piercings on his face, smoking whatever was available instead of locking himself in libraries and sending off college applications. Maybe.
But then he looked back at Jody’s laptop and thought that no, Dean was probably right, and he was an incurable nerd through and through. Dean, who, like Cas, still hadn’t got in contact, or answered his phone. It was happening all over again, he thought morosely as he slumped back on Jody’s couch, the flashing memory of a hammer flying at his face…
“Nothing shown up?” Jody asked as she walked over with a plate of sandwiches for him and slumped down next to him by the TV.
“Nothing. I’ve tried tracking the car down too, but no sign of that either.” The only other thing Sam could think of was summoning Crowley, but the idea of doing that here, with Jody and the new life she was trying to carve out for herself and this lost kid of hers, was impossible. Sam cleared his throat, making Jody raise her eyebrow sceptically.
“You know I… I really would get on to working a load faster if I had my stuff out in the bunker. So I… I really should be getting back there…” He trailed off at what he’d started to think of in his head after the appearance of Jody’s ‘Mom look’.
“No go, sunshine. You’re not moving anywhere, certainly not on your own, until at least after Christmas, and even then only if you can prove that you can walk without crutches. Can’t exactly go fighting off demons like your old self if you can’t even walk right, now can you? So no running off,” she finished, smiling through gritted teeth as she stood up. She was right. Sam envied her the ability to get off of the couch so easily.
“Demons, huh?”
Sam turned around. Alex was perched on the end arm of the sofa watching him strangely, in an almost bird-like manner.
“That’s the usual gig for you guys?”
Sam nodded slowly. “Yeah, I… I guess so these days. More like we’re the regular pickings for the demons, I think. It’s uh… it’s getting hard to tell.”
Alex’s face gave away nothing of what she thought of that.
“So you’re brother’s what, off getting possessed or something and you wanna run over and play exorcist on him?”
“Uh… kinda.” The girl had him unreasonably flustered. “See, I don’t know what’s going on – or what happened to him. But if what I’m worried about is right, then he’s not possessed, he’s just… turned demon. Again.”
“Again?” Sam wondered briefly if Jody and her adopted daughter ever had fights using only their eyebrows to communicate. “You kill vampires on sight but demons you hand out second chance cards to?”
“See vampires can choose to change their lifestyle, but we can’t know if they’re going to keep to that,” Sam started explaining, hands gesturing wildly, “or if we can get to them early enough, like you, we can just help switch them back. That, yeah, that actually happened to Dean once too… But demons… I do know how to turn them human again. It’s just that this… yeah, this also involves a load of blood.”
“And how’s he going to like you choosing to turn him vampire just to get him back on factory settings?”
“I don’t know,” Sam answered eventually, honestly. It felt like every time Dean disappeared on him, he always ended up doing the wrong thing. Last time, just like after Dean had gone to hell, he’d been condemned for how far he’d taken things. When Dean and Cas had ended up in purgatory, Dean still hadn’t let it go that Sam hadn’t tried harder to look for him. What if this time when Dean wanted to summarise things it wasn’t going to be Sam hit a dog, but Sam had himself a Merry Little Judy Garland Christmas because he went and got his ankle sprained?
“It’s just… it’s family, and I owe it to him to give it a shot.”
“Right. So that’s what the rule is,” Alex muttered, looking away from him now as she slid down off of the couch and walked away.
*
Dean’s face so assured, so amused, as he swung that hammer towards him. And why a hammer? It wasn’t a very Dean weapon at all, but then, neither had the First Blade been one. Neither were the elegant, quick and small blades or guns that Dean usually favoured. No, he’d chosen this because he didn’t want, didn’t need to have anything over with fast, he wanted to take his time, and have it hurting, and keep on hurting…
But this time Sam didn’t end up holding the knife up to Dean’s throat – it was all happening wrong, and Sam was sprawled on the floor, watching Dean crouch down next to him with the knife held at his own throat. “C’mon Sammy,” he was saying, “don’t you at least want to have a bite?”
Then he moved the knife down his neck, his shoulder, stroking himself with it until he reached his wrist, where, black eyes flashing mockingly, he opened up a vein. And Sam didn’t want to, he knew he didn’t want to, knew he was better than that, but the smell of it was so much worse, so much better, than anything he’d ever smelt in his life, and he didn’t even consciously recognise when his mouth was fixed on his brother’s arm…
When he looked up at last, Dean’s eyes had returned to their normal shade of green. “Sammy?”
It was like he’d sucked all the demon out, Sam thought, quite calmly, as he picked up the hammer his brother had so carelessly left on the floor beside them, and proceeded to bring it down heavily on Dean’s eyes, on his head, on his neck, again, and again, and again…
“Sam! Sam wake up!”
“…Jody?”
“Sam you were dreaming,” she told him firmly, gripping his shoulders. Sam took a deep breath. He wasn’t in the bunker. He wasn’t back with Dean. Dean for all he knew was fine, Sam was fine he was fine, he wasn’t in danger and he wasn’t a danger. He was on Jody’s couch, and it looked like it was the middle of the night.
“I didn’t want to let you thrash around and hurt yourself anymore,” Jody explained.
“…Uh. Thanks. Thanks, Jody.” He was still trying to steady his breathing. “I just uh… yeah. Bad dream.”
Jody’s eyes softened as she sat down on the floor in front of him. “Want to talk about it?”
“Uh… I…” Sam tried for a smile. “Not… not really, no.”
“Need to talk about anything?”
“I’ll be fine, honestly.”
“Guess it’s not the first nightmare you’ve ever had to go through, huh?” She smiled sadly. “You boys sound like you’ve been through your fair share.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s just easier to deal with when it’s not about us.”
Jody nodded and Sam remembered that she got better than anyone else should how it felt to watch someone you cared about becoming a monster as you watched. Though Jody, at least, surely never had to worry for herself on that front. Her blood wasn’t tainted, cursed.
“Sure you don’t want a drink or something?”
Sam sat up a little, propping himself up on his elbow. “What time is it?”
Jody shrugged. “Well I think it’s Christmas now, so have a merry one. I might make myself something alcoholic before heading back to bed…”
“Can I get in on that?” Alex was standing at the corner of the room in an oversized t-shirt with her arms crossed.
“You’re not even supposed to be awake never mind drinking…”
“Guess I was loud, huh?” Sam mumbled as he manoeuvred himself into sitting up properly to look over the couch at Alex who had raised two fingers which she lowered as she went on speaking. “What, you don’t want me to bump into Santa? One, its Christmas, and two, yes the dude screamed. I’m awake now. Drinking and presents now please.”
Jody gave Sam a can you believe what I have to put up with? face as Sam shrugged, amused, and tried to stifle a yawn. “Still sounds more of a Christmas tradition than I’m used to.”
“Doesn’t sound like that’s saying all that much,” Jody noted as she got to her feet. “But alright. I’ll see if I can’t hunt down some brandy. And I think there’s still a bottle of scotch up in the study somewhere…”
By 5am the three of them had huddled round near the fire they’d got going, clutching mugs of cocoa and whiskey and Sam was finally feeling… settled. Cosy, even. Like maybe he did need to be doing other things, but right now the only place he could be, and maybe the only place he wanted to be, was right here. “So this is something I picked up for you in town yesterday, Sam, so this is from me and Alex…”
Sam tripped over his tongue trying to thank her, not failing to notice Alex rolling her eyes at her inclusion in Jody’s gift-giving, but it didn’t seem unkind, this time. He noticed there wasn’t any package sitting out for her, and wondered what Jody had planned to give her as he started peeling at the wrapping paper, feeling an unreasonable rush of excitement as he did so. You’re not a ten year old anymore, he reminded himself as he opened up a large colourful plaid shirt.
“It looked like your kinda style,” Jody explained, a teasing smile tugging at her lips. “Now open the other one.”
Thanking her again, Sam turned to the second, larger, package and unwrapped a bright green woollen jumper, covered in wonkily knitted blue snowflakes. “Jody…”
“I know. Probably your first Christmas jumper, but I figured that everyone needs at least one in their wardrobe. Or car. Or whatever. You boys do have a place to stay these days, don’t you?”
“Uh, yeah. The bunker,” Sam told her as he wrestled himself into the jumper. “It’s where there’s all this… stuff got stored for safekeeping by this defunct secret society our Grandfather was a part of… yeah, that one’s a long story,” he trailed off as he looked down at himself. He looked ridiculous. It was probably the ugliest piece of clothing he’d ever seen, let alone owned, but he already loved it.
“Jody, this is…amazing,” he breathed with a laugh.
“So what sort of stuff gets stored in this bunker?” Alex asked, swilling her drink around in her mug as though she thought it was a wine glass.
“Uh, well a few weirdo artefacts – to be honest, we’ve barely even started looking through it all – but mainly a load of books. It’s… amazing how much these guys knew, really,” Sam gushed, cutting himself off for a pause as he tried to gauge how willing either of them were to listen to him. “Yeah. They knew some things about angels than I think even Cas, our angel, friend guy, actually knew, and mostly it’s just annoying we didn’t have all this knowledge just sitting there when we were trying to fight the apocalypse… but I guess that’s just how that works.”
Alex managed to lift her eyebrows even closer up towards her hairline. “Apocalypse.”
“Yeah, and he’s not lying about that,” Jody added, her eyes smiling faintly over at Sam with something like pride.
Sam cleared his throat, feeling a little awkward. He wasn’t entirely sure how much Jody did or didn’t know about any of it. “Uh. I just feel bad I’ve not got anything for you guys. When I’m back in a state for walking I’ll… uh… get it done.”
“Or you could do something else.”
Sam looked over at Alex trying to hide his alarm. Did she want some kind of favour?
“Well I, uh, I make a pretty mean sandwich…”
There. That was an almost-smile he’d drawn from her there, he was sure of it. “No. More like… talk to us. Angels, apocalypses, I wanna hear about it. If there’s shit like out there I don’t wanna wander around blind.”
Sam risked a quick glance at Jody, who seemed fairly ambivalent, though maybe a little curious herself. And Alex was still staring at him, a definite challenge in her eyes.
Sam sighed, heavier than he’d meant to. “Uh, cool. What do you wanna know?”
“Alright. So if there was an apocalypse, or there was almost one, how did that happen?”
Sam smiled, despite himself, biting down on his lip. “Well that was actually sorta my fault…”
And somehow explaining one thing led to explaining another, especially for Alex, who knew so little about him. He ended up needing to go into everything for any of it to make any sense, the demon blood, Ruby, the angels, his terror of Dean dying on him again, or almost as worse, rejecting him as some kind of monster. And then he’d needed to explain something about how he’d got out of hell, and sometimes Jody would come in with a question which would lead him into talking about something else, like what the Leviathan were if they weren’t demons, or how Dean had ended up with the Mark of Cain in the first place, and Sam knew it was probably stupid, but he just kept on talking and telling them all of it. And though it was painful, when the sun was coming up and he was finishing up explaining how Dean had seemed to progressively be getting worse, it felt like he’d been drawing some poison out of a few old wounds. It helped to talk. Dean would talk around things with him, they were both great at that, but he rarely wanted to go right into a deeper discussion about something which had been bothering him.
“…So yeah. I don’t know where he’s at right now, but whatever’s going on with him, I still owe it to him to be there for him.” Sam smiled slightly and looked down at his cast. “You know, whenever I can go do that.”
“You don’t owe him shit.”
“Alex,” Jody hissed at her but the teenager only shrugged.
“What? He doesn’t. It’s great that you still wanna do something to help. That’s cool, that’s who you are. But don’t make it out like you need to go do this to atone for something that happened years ago and wasn’t even your fault. The whole apocalypse shit, not your fault. I mean you had these angels, and the girl you liked and everybody telling you that it was the right thing to do, that it was the only thing anyone could do. You didn’t know what was gonna happen. And you stopped most of the bad stuff from happening in the first place. So stop angsting over it. It’s stupid.”
“Uh, thanks. I think.”
Jody smiled wryly at them both, looking more than a little sleep deprived. “She’s right though, Sam. You do need to stop beating yourself up over this sorta thing. Hell, I barely even understand half the things you’ve been talking about but I know that you and your brothers are heroes. And that Bobby’d be proud of you.”
Sam looked down to stare into his empty mug. “Thanks, Jody.”
“So. Christmas morning. I’ll go get your present, Alex, I hid it away downstairs…”
When Jody had gone Alex stretched her legs out over the carpet, reminding Sam of a contented cat. “So,” she asked, sounding a lot like Jody for a moment. “The angel dude. He’s got a thing for your brother.”
Sam let out a laugh. “Alright, that one’s a funny story actually. Because… did I tell you about the whole book series we had about of us?”
“You’re a book series now?”
“Well, sorta, I think the author stopped writing. He might be dead, not sure about that one…” But Sam didn’t manage to get to the end of that particular story because he and Alex were suddenly far too easily distracted by what Jody had just come in with. “A dog?” Alex cried in surprise as Jody let go of the retriever’s lead and it jumped on top of her.
“Her name’s Jackie, she’s three years old and she’s your responsibility since you were the one asking for her, Alex…” Jody mumbled on, tears lining her eyes as she looked down at them. “You… you like her?”
“I love her,” Alex answered eventually, face buried into the dog’s fur. “I’ll take good care of her, Jody.”
“Good.” Jody nodded to herself. “Right. That’s… well that’s sorted then.”
Sam smiled up at her as she turned away to walk over to the kitchen. She was Alex’s Bobby, he realised. Except that Alex didn’t need to work to convince her that she wasn’t a monster, Jody already knew that, maybe better than Alex did herself.
As Jody and Alex started putting breakfast together, Sam stayed perched on the couch, stroking his hand through Jackie’s fur over and over. He wondered again how Riot was doing, living with Amelia, and for that matter, how she was doing, now… He’d always wanted a dog. When he’d been about nine that had been his main argument for staying on in one place for something longer than a few months. Maybe, if he ever managed to make it to his old age, maybe then he’d get himself a dog. Something big like this one, maybe another Alsatian…
His phone rang just after Jody brought him over a cup of coffee. She caught his eye as they both read the caller ID.
“…Dean,” Sam managed as he reached over for his phone, buzzing on the side table. Jody handed it over to him, her face hopeful, if frantic.
“Dean?”
“Heya Sammy.” He sounded tired, but alive, and very himself. “Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, and you… Dean where the hell are you? What happened?”
“Yeah, uh, things got a little hairy back there, but we’re good. I’m with Cas and we’re both alright. How ‘bout you?”
“I’m ok, Dean, I can’t really walk yet and I still don’t even know what happened…”
“You can’t walk? Where are you now?”
“I’m with…” Sam stopped himself. “Wait you’re with Cas right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So put him on the phone.”
An edge crept into Dean’s voice. “Are you trying to check on me?”
“Well I can’t exactly test you with holy water from this distance, can I?”
There was a long pause and for a moment Sam worried he’d pushed him too far. But then he remembered Alex’s words to him earlier, about not owing his brother anything, and he held back the apology already waiting on his lips.
“Fine. Yeah I guess that uh, that makes sense…”
And as soon as he heard Cas’ voice on the phone Sam finally allowed himself to relax. It was Christmas Day, and ok, sure, he couldn’t walk, but they were all alright. And he was allowed to feel… alright. Happy, even.
“So have I got another couple of guests coming to stay then?”
Sam let out a long breath. “Yeah, I… I think so.” And then for no reason in particular he started laughing. Jackie sat up as though irritated that he’d stopped patting her. “Sorry, girl,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere yet.”
*