Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean

Before the Impala collides with the corner of an oncoming Honda Civic, Dean remembers three specific things.

The first, and most important, is that Sam gave him the wrong directions. Cell service cut out a few miles back, and they’d been forced to rely instead on Sam’s map-reading skills. After circling the same run-down town and rickety wooden bridge and patchy cornfields four times, Dean snapped and made to grab the map from Sam’s grip.

“You’ve gotta be leading us the wrong way, man, we’re going in circles!” Dean said, meeting resistance when Sam held fast to the paper. “Let me look, I’ll figure this out.”

“Dean, I swear, I’m not leading us wrong!” Sam said, glaring and indignant, attempting to snatch the map out of Dean’s reach. “Something’s off, okay? Just pull the car over and we can figure it out.”

The second thing Dean remembers is the sound of paper ripping as he’d looked up, startled, at the sound of screeching tires. A pair of headlights swerved in front of them, the car losing traction on the wet road, four-thousand pounds of metal surging in their direction. Dean jerked at the wheel, too late—maybe even making the collision worse, in hindsight.

The third and final thing Dean remembers, under the crunch of metal on metal and the nauseating lurch of his stomach as the Impala flipped off the road, is the panicked sound of Sam shouting his name.

  They weren’t even sure this was a case to begin with, is the annoying thing. There’d been a string of disappearances and missing person reports, all reported within the same area of Indiana. It was like the earth had opened up in this one square mile and sucked these people into it. Mysterious disappearances aren’t usually their MO, but Dean was starting to feel antsy, and he’d latched onto the potential case with ferocity.

Sam must have been feeling similarly restless, because he just sighed and got into the car with little protest. “This doesn’t seem like anything, Dean,” he’d said as they pulled onto the highway, but after that he’d only argued about music and snack choices. Until they’d starting circling the same three blocks over and over, the ride had been downright enjoyable.

Dean comes to only a few moments after the Impala has stopped spinning through the air. Rain drips, cold and steady, onto his forehead. He blinks water out of his eyes as he opens them, his vision rotating lazily as it gradually refocuses. He can feel the spot where he hit the back of his head—it throbs angrily, tender and swollen, but he’s had way worse. He winces, pushing aside the pain, and looks around.

They’ve shuddered to a stop at the bottom of a rocky ravine, the car tilted on its side. Dean is laid out against the driver’s side door, water rushing underneath him, the bent metal of the door digging harshly into his back. He shifts, sitting up, relieved to find that his legs still work. He doesn’t seem injured, aside from the hit to his head and some serious bruising.

He expects to see Sam squeezed up against him, but there’s no two-hundred pounds of muscle crushing him to the door. Dean lifts his head, craning his neck to see through the spiderwebbing of cracks in the windshield.

“Sam?” he tries to call. His voice sounds like sandpaper on cardboard. He clears his throat, tries again. “Sam!”

A low, pained groan meets him. It’s coming from outside the car.

Dean grits his teeth and slides his legs back, getting his feet planted underneath him. He grips at the leather seat with one hand and the dash with the other, and hoists himself toward the passenger door above him. The metal must have gotten warped on impact, because the door hangs open, swinging back and forth lightly. Dean grips the ragged edges of the metal frame and, with a grunt, hoists his upper body up and out of the car.

The first thing he notices, when he looks with blurry eyes out over the ravine, is that they must have crashed right into someone’s house—or, at least, someone’s beat-up old shed. The rubble of it is scattered around them, shards of rotted wood and glass. Dean hopes that the house was already destroyed before they got here, because he doesn’t need another layer of guilt on his conscience.

The second thing he notices is that among the remains of the shed, a familiar lanky figure is sprawled out under the trees. Prickles of fear shoot up and down Dean’s spine.

“Sam!” he calls. He gets no response, but it doesn’t matter; Dean is already moving, hefting the lower half of his body out of the wrecked Impala. He pauses for a moment, sitting at the edge of the metal, to catch his breath as the dizziness subsides. He awkwardly slides his legs toward the ground and drops, without much grace, into the muddy, drenched grass. His knees nearly buckle out from underneath him, and he has to press one hand against the underside of the Impala to keep himself upright.

He staggers toward his brother, bits of glass crunching underneath his boots. When Sam comes into view, at first Dean is relieved, because he can see Sam stirring, blinking open his eyes in bemused confusion. Dean kneels next to him, catching his shoulder, and grips firmly. “Hey, whoa, easy,” he says, when Sam tries to sit up. “Take it easy, okay?”

Sam looks over at him, frowning. He blinks a few more times. “What the hell?” he mutters. “What happened?”

“Some asshole was blinded by my impeccable driving skills,” Dean says. “He clipped us and we went flying. You must have gotten launched out the passenger door.” He looks critically at Sam’s face. “You hurt, man?”

“I, uh…” Sam tries again to lift his head, and his face pales. Dean follows his gaze, looking away from Sam’s face for the first time, and nausea spins in his gut. A metal pipe is stuck straight through Sam’s leg, protruding just above his knee.

Dean feels panic carve ragged slices into his ribs. Dizziness returns, nearly sending him face-first into the wet ground. He clenches his hand at Sam’s shoulder, fighting the feeling. Help Sam , he tells himself firmly. Help Sam. Panic later .

The feeling of Sam’s body shaking under his palm is what finally snaps him back to attention. Sam is gasping, staring up at the treetops, maybe going into shock, maybe launching himself into a PTSD-fueled flashback. His fingers have closed around the damp fabric of Dean’s flannel, gripping so tight that his knuckles have gone white. “Hey,” Dean says, leaning over him, tapping his fingers against Sam’s face. “Hey, look at me. It’s okay, you’re going to be fine. I’ve gotcha. This is nothing, Sammy, it’s nothing. We’ve dealt with way worse. Right?”

Sam sucks in a shuddering breath. He nods, but doesn’t reply, and doesn’t release his grip on Dean’s shirt. The pain must be setting in now, Dean realizes, and his chest aches with sympathy.

“Stay with me, okay?” Dean says. “Let me just go grab the first aid kit, I’ll be right back.”

Sam’s grip tightens on Dean’s shirt for a brief second, but then he nods again, loosens his fingers. Dean gets up and hurries for their sideways car, and struggles with numb fingers to get the trunk open. It’s getting late now, and he can see his breath in tiny clouds as he pants quick, adrenaline-filled gasps of air. He doesn’t want to be here after dark.

Their supplies have gone apeshit during the crash, but everything is still there. Dean sorts through it with lightning speed and emerges with their first-aid kit, plus a recently-loaded pistol, just in case. He tucks the gun into his jeans and hefts the first aid kit onto his shoulder, but as he rounds the car he freezes.

Two figures are crouched beside Sam, speaking in low, urgent voices.

“We can’t stay here much longer, they’ll be out within a couple of hours,” a young woman, her messy black hair tied in a loose bun, is saying.

Next to her is a man in his sixties, dressed similar to the woman in functional, worn clothes. His face is full of fine lines, but he’s in good shape, like he’s the kind of guy who exercises five days a week and only eats vegetables. “I’m hesitant to move him,” the man says, his voice surprisingly warm, patient even, though the undercoat of worry is obvious. “But you’re right—we can’t do much out here, especially with the rain, and with the time crunch…”

Dean pulls out his gun, points it at the two figures. “Get away from him,” he says.

The man and the woman look up at him, startled. The woman gasps and lifts her hands, staggering to her feet. The man, however, stays crouched beside Sam. He lifts his hands calmly. “It’s all right,” he says, in that disarmingly warm voice. “We’re here to help.”

“Who the hell are you?” Dean says.

“My name is Remington Jerald,” the man says. “I’ve been the doctor in town for almost twenty-five years. This is my daughter, Kelsey—my protégé. We heard about the accident and came down to see if anyone was injured.”

“Town?” Dean echoes. “What town? There’s nothing around here for miles.”

Doctor Jerald shakes his head. “Jericho never shows on any maps,” he says. “I’ll explain later. First, we need to figure out how to get both of you to safety.”

He nods at Sam, whose eyes are closed. He must have passed out while Dean was getting supplies. “Shit,” Dean hisses through his teeth, gun still held aloft. For a moment he’s caught in indecision, but he doesn’t really have a choice whether or not to trust these two right now.

“You know him?” Doctor Jerald asks, nodding his head at Sam.

Dean clenches his teeth together, but he nods. “He’s my brother,” he says. “We were both in the car. He must’ve got launched.”

Doctor Jerald nods. “I don’t think it would be wise to remove the pipe from his leg here,” he says. “I’ve got a pickup truck up at the top of the ravine. If we can get him into town, we’ll have better resources there. Less of a chance for infection and blood loss.” He keeps his gaze fixed levelly on Dean’s. “If you want to save your brother’s life, I’m going to need you to trust me.”

Dean finally cracks, the urgency to get Sam to safety winning out against his lingering unease. He drops his weapon, sliding it back into the waistband of his jeans. “How far is it to town?” he asks brusquely, kneeling at Sam’s other side with the first aid kit still hooked over his shoulder.

“A couple miles,” Doctor Jerald says. “We need to move quickly—it’s almost nightfall. Things get…dangerous out here at night.”

Dean chooses to ignore that ominous thought and leans over his brother, tapping gently at the side of his face. Sam grunts, eyelids flickering. “Sammy,” Dean says. “Hey, little brother, rise and shine. I can’t lug your ass out of here without a little help.”

Sam’s eyes shoot open with a sharp intake of breath. He tries to move, and hisses in pain. Dean presses a hand against his chest. “Whoa, hang on. Sam? Sam, easy.”

Sam looks over at him, panting, and then at the two strangers beside them. Kelsey has started to approach tentatively, still looking a little pale and rattled from being held at gunpoint. Dean can’t find it in himself to care very much. “Who are you?” Sam says.

“Sam, I’m Doctor Remington Jerald,” Doctor Jerald says. “You can call me RJ. This is my daughter, Kelsey. We need to get you into town to treat you, all right?”

Sam frowns at them, assessing, and then glances at Dean. Dean nods at him— they’re okay —and Sam’s expression relaxes.

“You’re gonna have to walk, man,” Dean says. “Just up the hill.”

“Yeah,” Sam groans. “Great.”

He sits up and slides his good leg underneath him, first. Dean shoulders underneath his left arm, RJ his right, and the two of them help lift him to his feet. Sam sucks in a quick breath, ragged with pain, as he moves his injured leg, and his knees nearly buckle. Dean grips him, fisting the front of his jacket as he sways.

“Whoa, whoa, Sam,” Dean says. “Hang in there, c’mon. Stay with us, man.”

Sam takes a few breaths, nods faintly. His face is startlingly pale and his eyes are glazed with pain. “I’m good. I’m okay, I got it.”

It’s a lie, one Sam is saying more for Dean’s benefit than his own, but it doesn’t matter either way right now. “Let’s go,” Dean says, and Sam limps forward as they head for the edge of the ravine.

The hill is shallow, mercifully, but Sam is visibly struggling with every inch of progress they make. Even through the rain, Dean can see the sheen of sweat beading his forehead from the strain, and the way he’s nearly biting off the inside of his cheek to withstand the pain. “Almost there,” Dean mutters as they trudge, bit by bit, toward the main road. “Come on, Sam, hang in there, just a couple more steps.”

He's not even sure Sam is listening to him, until Sam mutters through gritted teeth, “I swear if you hold this over me one day, I’m going to kill you.”

Dean laughs, short and breathless. “Of course I am,” he says. “It’s part of the job description.”

The moment they’ve crested the hill, Sam slumps, nearly going unconscious. Dean lurches forward and grips him before his knees can hit the ground. “Sam?” he says, mildly panicked.

“Get him to my truck over there,” RJ says, pointing. “Kelsey, get the blanket out of the front seat.”

RJ and Kelsey weren’t the only two people who came to the rescue, evidently—Dean assesses the damage as they lug Sam toward the truck, eyeing the crumpled mini van smushed against a wide maple tree. Two men are helping a young blonde woman out of the front seat, while an older woman tries to wrest open the back seat. There’s a child in the back, wailing, still strapped into his car seat.

“Get Jonah out!” the blonde woman is pleading, as she’s dragged out of the car. There’s blood trickling down her hairline and her eyes are red with tears, but otherwise she looks unharmed. “Please, get him out, make sure he’s okay!”

“Go help them,” RJ says, nodding at the other car. He’s arranging a blanket across Sam’s lower body in the bed of the truck, while Kelsey takes Sam’s pulse. “We’ve got your brother.”

Dean hesitates, about to refuse, but Sam chimes in: “I’m fine, Dean. Help her with her kid.”

Sam is clearly fighting to stay conscious, his eyes half-lidded and his voice scratchy. But his expression is intent, stubborn even. Dean knows better than to argue.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, and then crosses the road to the mini-van.

The two men have helped sit the woman at the edge of the road, and one of them is kneeling next to her, asking her questions in a quiet, soothing voice. The other man—a dark-skinned middle-aged guy with a decent build—approaches the back seat, meanwhile, where the older woman is wringing her hands worriedly.

“I couldn’t get it open,” the woman says. “The child locks…”

“We’ll have to bust it open,” the muscular guy says. “Maybe if we bend the metal enough—”

“You could hurt the child, Larson!” the woman says.

“How else are we gonna get him out?” Larson says, throwing his hands up. “We can’t get in through the front, it’s too banged up.”

“I’ve got it,” Dean says, withdrawing his lock-picking kit from his jacket pocket. Larson and the older woman look over at him, startled. Dean shoulders his way in between them and kneels by the door.

“Who the hell are you?” Larson says. Dean hears a disapproving tsk from the older woman.

“Tourist,” Dean says shortly, focused on the task at hand. It only takes a few moments—this isn’t Dean’s first rodeo—and the lock clicks. He rises and tugs at the door; it protests at first, but eventually creaks open.

The woman gasps. “How on earth—?

Dean climbs into the back seat and toward the child—Jonah, he assumes—who has stopped wailing and just sniffs miserably at him. The kid looks only four or five. He doesn’t seem hurt, just scared.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean says. “I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? Hold tight.”

He unclips the car seat straps and lifts the kid out—carefully, just in case he has any injuries that Dean doesn’t see—and emerges from the car. He sets the kid on the ground and the older woman gasps beside him, kneeling to look the child over. “Oh, honey!” she says, squeezing the child’s arms. “Baby, are you all right? Thank goodness!”

“Jonah!” the blonde woman staggers to her feet and throws herself towards her child, water splashing underneath her knees as she pulls the kid into her arms. She sobs into his hair, stroking his back.

The older woman gets to her feet, smiling a teary-eyed smile. She touches Dean’s arm. “Nice work, darling,” she says. “Quick thinking.”

Dean just shrugs. But he feels warmth in his chest, nevertheless.

“Hey, Larson, Bonnie, Alan!” RJ yells from his truck. “We need to get a move on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

RJ eyes Dean doubtfully as he climbs into the bed of the truck, taking a seat at his brother’s side. “Bonnie has room in her car,” he says. “You can ride into town with her if you want.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m staying with my brother,” he says.

RJ must hear something in Dean’s voice, because he doesn’t argue, just shrugs and throws the car into drive. They streak down the road, past the cornfields. Dean keeps one hand pressed to Sam’s arm the entire bumpy ride, feeling the beat of his pulse, reminding himself that they’re still alive. Still alive. Still alive.  

Sam

Sam isn’t entirely sure where he is. He feels nausea crest in his body, waves of pain chasing each one, and he feels trapped by it, caged in the constant barrage of sensation. It eats away at his awareness, splintering the jagged, frayed pieces of his consciousness. He’s spent so many months feeling fragile. He wants to fight against it—and he can’t.

“Sam. Sammy? Hey, hang in there, we’re almost there. You stay with me, all right?”

That’s Dean’s voice, but Sam knows this trick. First it’s the voice, comforting, warm, and then it’s the pressure of his hands, gripping at Sam’s shoulders, resting against his head, cupping the back of his neck. Sam resists it for as long as he can bear, fighting the desperate instinct to give in and curl into that familiar warmth.

Sammy, it’s me , the voice says to him, soft, reassuring, plaintive. I’m here. I’ve got you. Hey, come on, look at me.

And Sam gives in. He always does.

Sometimes he’d get a few moments where Dean draws him close, his arms solid and his clothes smelling of leather and smoke and whiskey, and Sam would lean into him and breathe. He never really believes that Dean is here to save him, but he takes the comfort and the contact anyway, grits his teeth and tries to imagine the feeling of being eight years old and believing, in his bones, that the circle of Dean’s arms could protect him from the monsters and the darkness and the pain.

 In later decades, after years of hell have torn into Sam’s soul, he’ll sob through his gritted teeth, clutching at the folds of his brother’s clothing. He knows it isn’t real, and he clings anyway, and Dean’s voice murmurs to him, I’ve got you, little brother. It’s okay, Sammy .

And then inevitably, Dean fades, like he always does. Sam is left clutching at empty air, curled into himself, shivering and alone. His fractured soul cracks just a little more, veins of hairline fissures criss-crossing his psyche in a collage of grief. One day he figured he would shatter like glass, and the millions of pieces of his soul would have to be glued back together one by one, and there’d be no coming back from that.

He should have known that Dean would break out the superglue and stubbornly begin piecing together those glass shards by hand. Dean’s hands could be cut and bleeding from the ragged edges of Sam’s soul, and he’d still keep putting Sam back together, piece by piece like a puzzle missing half of itself.

The utter devotion of that, the way Dean disregards his own needs and fears and shattered psyche to piece Sam back together, is unfathomable. Sam doesn’t deserve that level of sacrifice and persistence. He hasn’t earned the right to be loved like that.

He wants to ask sometimes. He wanted to look his brother in the eye while Dean examined his torn-up hand and ask, Why? Why are you doing this for me? Why did you save me? I didn’t deserve it.

But he knows how Dean would react. Dean would look at him like he was insane, shake his head, roll his eyes. Shut up Sammy, stop asking stupid questions and eat the damn granola bar.

And then there’s some deeper, frightened part of Sam’s mind that worries Dean will pause, look at him thoughtfully, and respond, You’re right. You don’t .

Privately, Sam has always been afraid that Dean will eventually realize Sam is not worth it. That Dean is wasting his time, trying to keep Sam safe, trying to piece him back together. And he’ll walk away, leaving Sam alone and clutching at empty air.

A nauseating lurch of pain shakes Sam out of his memories and drops him back into reality, ka- chunk , like the Impala hitting a pothole. Sam gives a strangled shout and jerks instinctually, struggling to escape the sudden return of pain. Someone is digging the white-hot point of an iron spoke into his leg, and the fire is radiating up and down his body. He swears he can hear that voice— his voice—laughing at him from the corner of the Cage, enjoying his pain, feeding on it.

Hands catch his flailing arms, clamping them down by his sides. “Sam, stop ,” a voice, a different one this time, says by his head. “You gotta stay still, man, come on.”

Sam does not stop struggling. Pain rages up and down his limbs. The hands holding down his arms are strong, but Sam is stronger, and he knows he can get free if he tries hard enough. More hands appear, clinical hands, pinning one of his ankles, gripping hard at his head.

“He’s fucking strong,” someone says, voice strained. “Kelsey, just yank the damn thing out.”

“I…” a soft female voice hesitates by Sam’s feet. “I can’t…I might hurt him like this, I’m…”

“Get off of me, get the fuck off—” Sam doesn’t really realize he’s speaking at first. He wants the words to come out forceful and commanding, but his voice is ragged with pain, and instead they just come out breathless and pleading. He chuckles again from the corner of the cage, and Sam feels it in his chest, like the slimy length of seaweed being threaded through his ribs.

“Sammy, look at me!” A cool hand grips his chin, and a pair of eyes lock on his. Sam blinks, panting for air, blinded by the fluorescent lights creating a halo behind the figure’s head. Sam’s eyesight slides in and out of focus. “That’s it,” the same voice says, gentler now. The hand releases his chin, resting instead at the side of his neck. “You’re okay, man. Come back to earth, huh? Can’t save your ass if you keep fighting us.”

Sam blinks again and realizes he’s on a padded medical table, in a run-down looking clinic. There are others surrounding the table, still pinning him there; Sam can’t bring himself to look at them, keeps his gaze fixed on his brother.

“Dean?” he rasps. He sounds like he’s been smoking every day for twenty years.

Dean smiles at him, but it doesn’t quite mask the pale, frightened lines of his face. “About time you decided to join us,” he says. He pats the side of Sam’s face and withdraws his hand. He’s still gripping Sam’s arm with his other hand, but not with any real pressure, no longer trying to hold him in place.

“Sam,” the voice at Sam’s feet says. The young woman from the accident—Kelsey, Sam recalls, after some fumbling—circles the table to stand beside RJ. “I need to get the metal rod out of your leg. I can give you some low-grade painkillers, but I don’t have the equipment to put you out.”

“You’re saying it’s going to fucking hurt,” Sam says dully.

Kelsey nods. She glances at RJ, and then continues, “And…I’m going to need you to try and stay still, especially while I’m removing it. If you thrash around, it’s going to take longer and we’re going to run the risk of doing more damage.”

“We could restrain him,” an additional voice suggests. Sam looks over and finds a tall, slender man with spiky brown hair hovering nearby. “We have those cuffs upstairs.”

Dean’s hand clenches on Sam’s arm. “You’re not handcuffing him to the fucking table,” he snaps.

“It’s okay,” Sam says quickly. “I can handle it. Just get it over with, okay?”

Kelsey regards him for a long moment, but eventually she nods and circles to the foot of the table again. RJ follows her, and helps her lay out her materials. Nausea returns as Sam watches, roiling inside him.

“You were muttering in your sleep,” Dean says, and Sam drags his eyes away, looking over at his brother. “I couldn’t make out most of it, but you hardly stopped talking the whole way here.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Dreaming about anything in particular?”

Even with the pain and the fear, Sam somehow still has it in him to feel embarrassed. “The usual,” he says. “You know how it goes.”

Dean tips his head, conceding the point. “We drove through some of the town to get here,” he says. “Jericho. Looks like it’s been here for decades, rotting. These guys have barely managed to keep it upright.”

“How long do you think they’ve been here?” Sam asks.

Dean shakes his head. “No idea. Too long, probably.”

Sam exhales. “How are we gonna get out of here?”

“One thing at a time,” Dean says, expression tightening as he looks down at Sam’s injured leg again. “Let’s figure that out once you’re out of the woods.”

“Okay, Sam,” Kelsey says then, straightening. She has gloves on her hands now and is holding a pair of scissors. “I’m going to cut some of the fabric of your jeans out of the way, and then RJ and I are gonna pull out the pipe. Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sam says tightly.

Kelsey cuts away a few pieces of the bloody, crusted denim, and then she grips at the base of the pipe. She pauses. “Dean,” she says. “Hold onto him for me, just in case. Alan, stay close in case Dean can’t keep him down on his own.”

Dean lowers himself at Sam’s head, hands gripping firmly at Sam’s shoulders. Sam’s breathing starts coming in shallow, quick gasps as he braces himself for the pain. His heart thunders against his ribcage, frantic, like a bird trying to escape. After a century of pain, he should be used to it.

Kelsey pulls at the pipe. Sam’s vision whites out.

When awareness returns, he realizes he screamed, the sound still echoing off the white plaster walls. He’s gripping at both of Dean’s arms, fingernails digging into the damp fabric of his jacket. Dean’s head is right beside his, voice muttering words that Sam can only make out bits and pieces of.

The metal rod withdraws another inch and Sam grits his teeth as another scream tears out of his throat, struggling with all his awareness not to thrash against the pain.

“I’ve gotcha, Sammy,” Dean is saying, voice low at his ear. “I’ve got you, you’re okay. You’re gonna be fine. Stay with me, now, come on.”

“Almost there,” Kelsey says breathlessly.

Sam feels the sickening tug as the pipe is pulled free, and it nearly makes him black out. He sucks in a ragged gasp, clenches his jaw all over again when a cloth presses itself against the bleeding, open wound on his leg.

“Okay, you’re okay.” Dean is still speaking to him, and Sam clings frantically to the sound of his voice. “Hang in there, Sammy.”

But Sam doesn’t hear anything else he says, doesn’t feel the sting of the first stitch being woven into his flesh, because exhaustion finally takes him. He succumbs, gratefully, to oblivion.

Chapter Text

Dean

Dean rubs his hand over his chin, the stubble scratching at the palm of his hand. He stares, eyes unfocused, at the peeling wallpaper behind Sam’s bed, distantly grossed out by the tacky forest-green-and-puke-yellow floral design. At some point it might have looked okay, he supposes, but a few decades of decay and water damage have made the flowers look warped and unrecognizable, more like yellow blobs than actual plants.

Sam shifts in his sleep, and Dean’s gaze drops from the wallpaper at once, snapping to his brother’s face. Sam’s breathing stutters a little, forehead puckering, and Dean tenses, ready to rise out of the creaky wooden chair he’d dragged over to Sam’s bedside. But Sam settles again, expression smoothing out, and Dean exhales.

It’s been three, maybe four hours since they arrived in Jericho. After leaving the makeshift hospital, RJ and Kelsey brought them to a huge three-story Victorian house at the west side of town—the Big House, they called it—and settled Sam in a cot on the first floor. Like many of the buildings here, the Big House was probably remarkable once; now, the green siding is chipping away, the embellished turret at the corner of the house looks like it’s caving in, and the ornamented wood exterior is beginning to wear away, the intricacies fading with age.

Inside, it’s a little nicer. Care has clearly been given to the wooden banister on the main staircase and to the hardwood floors to keep them sturdy. The furniture is reasonably clean, and aside from the peeling wallpaper the walls are all in one piece, too. The same can’t be said for half the houses they passed on the way here, with their collapsed roofs and scaffolding stripped bare.

RJ made up the nearby couch with an old bedsheet and a couple of pillows, too, for Dean. But he can’t move, can barely look away from Sam for more than a few minutes without feeling instinctual, ferocious panic dig into his ribs.

He feels exhausted, though, bone-deep exhausted. His eyes hurt and the back of his head is throbbing and his jaw aches. He rubs at it again errantly, pressing his fingers hard against the side of his face.

Flakes of blood come off of his hands. He lowers them both into his lap, looking at them. The rain washed most of the blood off, but he never bothered to scrub the rest. It doesn’t matter, really—Sam’s blood, his blood—hasn’t in years, maybe decades. It’s all the same to him. But it bothers him, suddenly, now, and he’s seized with the urge to get rid of it.

He reaches for a stray cloth hanging off the edge of Sam’s cot, and uses it to rub at his hands. It hurts, how hard he scrubs, and his skin comes away pink and angry, but the blood starts to disappear.

He shuts his eyes as he works the cloth over his hands, shaking away the memory of Sam’s screams of pain. It’s too quiet in here, in spite of the dozen or so residents who supposedly live in the various bedrooms, and Dean still feels like Sam’s voice is echoing in his ears, latching itself onto his ear canal.

Dean had been so fucking useless, brain boiled grey with fear. He’s not supposed to get lost in his fear like that—that isn’t him. It’s never been him. Especially now, when Sam needs someone steady and grounded, and Dean almost lost it, right there in that shabby little clinic.

He probably screamed like that in the Cage . The thought carves across Dean’s psyche like the point of a knife, so horrible and repugnant that he almost retches. He throws aside the washcloth and stands, as though physically recoiling, his chair scraping across the hardwood and clattering to the floor behind him. His hands shake at his sides, still speckled with Sam’s blood.

RJ rounds the corner, drawn by the sound. He’s holding a chipped white mug in his hand, steam rising from the center. “Dean?” he says. “Is everything all right?”

Dean gathers himself, scraping together whatever torn bits and pieces of his dignity remain. He nods shortly and bends to collect the chair, lifting it back onto its feet. “All good,” he says. “Peachy.”

RJ regards him silently, dark eyes scouring Dean’s expression. He comes closer and holds out the white mug. “I assume you’re not much of a tea person,” he says. “But this stuff is different, trust me.”

Dean eyes the mug warily. He starts to refuse, but RJ pushes the mug closer to him and shakes his head. “I swear, it’s better than whiskey. Just shut up and try it.”

Dean rolls his eyes but takes the mug and sips. It doesn’t taste like tea—it’s somewhere between coffee and whiskey, bitter and earthy but with a bit of a burn, as though it’s been infused with spices and licorice. “Huh,” he says.

RJ smiles briefly. He passes Dean to sit beside Sam on the bed, reaching for his wrist. He takes Sam’s pulse, timing it on his watch. “Has he woken up at all?” RJ asks.

“No,” Dean says. “Not yet.” He sighs and settles back on his wooden chair, stiff joints protesting ominously. “Look, RJ, I appreciate what you’ve done for me and my brother. You saved our lives. But we can’t stay here, not with Sam in such bad shape.”

RJ clasps his hands between his knees. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” he says. “If I knew how to leave, I would have done so years ago.”

Dean stares at him. He flexes his hands around his mug. “How long have you been here?” he asks hoarsely, afraid of the answer.

“Ten years,” RJ says quietly, heavily. “Give or take.”

Dean feels the idea of that yawn out underneath him, a great dark chasm opening like a mouth, ready to swallow him. He feels nauseated and he has to look away from RJ’s probing gaze. He sips his tea to give himself a moment to gather his emotions and school his expression.

“Son of a bitch,” he mutters finally.

RJ just hums, as though in agreement. “You weren’t the first to stumble across our town and get yourselves trapped with us,” he says. “And you won’t be the last. If we could have warned you—if we could have stopped it—I promise we would have.”

Dean believes him. He exhales slowly, unsteadily, his gaze sliding back to his brother’s still, pale form. Sam is breathing slowly, the blankets rising and falling with the gentle movement of his chest, but his forehead is pinched, expression tight as though he can feel the pain of his leg even in his sleep.

Sam is too fragile right now, emotionally, physically, mentally. Dean wouldn’t say that to him out loud—Sam already keenly feels the fragility of his own mind, down to his bones, and will fight tooth and nail to keep from feeling more like a burden than he already does—but it’s just the truth. Dean spends every day on tenterhooks, watching Sam covertly, waiting for the thin spiderwebbing of his sanity to shred, ready to hold Sam together with his bare hands and glue him back into place, if he has to.

If he could—if it wouldn’t be a disrespectful strike at Sam’s independence and sense of self—he’d never let Sam out of his sight. He’s afraid that the moment he lets himself look away, Sam will crumble, and Dean won’t be fast enough to catch him, and Sam will be broken into too many pieces for Dean to put him back together.

“My brother isn’t going to last here, RJ,” Dean says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “If his leg gets infected, he won’t last ten days without a hospital, never mind ten years.”

“I won’t let that happen,” RJ says. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep you and your brother safe, Dean. I promise you.”

His voice is gentle, but there’s a firm determination there. Dean meets his piercing gaze and, again, believes him. For now, it’s enough.

RJ straightens, placing his hands on his knees. “There are some unused rooms upstairs,” he says. “I’ll have one arranged for you and Sam. You can stay there until you decide what you’d like to do.” At Dean’s look of confusion, RJ explains, “We have some houses, if you’d rather move into one of those. They’re a bit worse for wear, but they have working heating and plumbing and more privacy. Once Sam is a bit better, you can make the decision together.”

Dean nods. He rubs his thumb along the rim of his cup, contemplating the idea of it—a house, with a yard and a front door. The thought of it somehow makes his skin prickle and his chest grow warm simultaneously. Both foreign and deeply, unnervingly appealing.

RJ stands slowly, stretching out his back. “I’ll check in on Sam in a couple hours,” he says. “But I’ll be close by, so just shout if you need me.”

He leaves, a ringing silence lingering behind him. Dean doesn’t move from his chair, just staring at his brother, hands clenched around his teacup as it cools. RJ’s words, ten years , echo along the space inside his head.

Sam

Sam is caught by something—barbed wire, a hook, a length of fire-heated metal maybe, it doesn’t matter. If there’s one thing his years in the Cage taught him, it’s that pain is pain is pain. The source of the pain or even the level of agony, ultimately, doesn’t matter after a point. It all melds together, inseparable.

He still tries to escape, even when it’s pointless, even when it just makes the barbed wire dig harder into his flesh. He still screams, even when it doesn’t make a difference, even when it gains a satisfied little laugh in response.

“Sam, Sammy! Hey, whoa, whoa, easy. Easy, Sam!”

Sam’s eyes shoot open, but the barbed wire doesn’t loosen from his body, and the fire doesn’t fade from his vision. Hands catch his flailing wrists, gripping firmly, the skin calloused and rough.

“Hey,” the voice above him says, sharply, like an order. “Sam, look at me. Look at me .”

Sam blinks hard, and a face comes into focus above him. Dean is leaning over him, face tight with concern, sandy hair catching the rays of morning sunlight. Sam stares at him, struggling for breath, reality slowly settling back into place around him. He clings to it, fighting off the memory of barbed wire and cold, empty solitude.

Desperate for something solid to ground him, Sam pulls his arm free of Dean’s grip—loosened now that Sam has stopped fighting—and presses his hand to Dean’s face, pawing inelegantly at his cheek and his jaw. Stubble and scar tissue scratches reassuringly at the pads of his fingers. “Dean?” Sam’s voice is ragged, probably from screaming. The word comes out shaky and thin, like he’s six years old again. He’ll probably be embarrassed by that later.

Dean bats away his searching hands, but smiles. He settles at Sam’s hip, the bed creaking under their shared weight. “It’s me,” he says. “No need to get handsy.”

Sam looks around at the room, still getting his bearings as the worst of the nightmares fade. He and Dean are alone in a small living room, but Sam can hear a lot of voices and footsteps nearby, muffled by the walls. “Where are we?” he asks.

“They call it the Big House,” Dean says. “It’s fuckin’ mansion in here, dude. You were out cold when we brought you in.”

Sam frowns, struggling to dredge up his memories without reawakening his nightmares. “I don’t remember much after the crash,” he says. “I think…my leg, it was…” He shifts it underneath the blankets, and winces at a spike of red-hot pain. “ Fuck .”

“Easy, Sammy.” Dean rests a hand on the injured leg, not enough pressure to hurt but enough for Sam to feel the warmth of it. “You had a pipe straight through your leg, dude. You’re gonna be taking it easy for a while.”

Sam grits his teeth as the spike of pain eases back. “ God ,” he says. “Fucking hurts .”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Dean stands. “I’ll grab you something for the pain.”

Sam resists the urge to reach out and cling to him and ask him not to leave, like a needy eight-year-old. Dean is barely gone for a minute, anyway—he returns with a glass of water and three pain pills, which Sam gulps down one by one.

Dean settles back on the bed next to him afterwards, scrutinizing Sam’s face. Normally Sam would find the scrutiny irritating and even off-putting; Dean has been hovering especially closely over the past few weeks, more than usual. But right now Sam finds himself staring right back, still shaken by the events of the last few hours, relieved by the fact that they’re still here, together—wherever here is.

Dean’s nearness is the only thing keeping Sam off the ledge, holding his feet on solid ground. Sam has found himself putting aside his stubborn need for independence time and time again, lately, too hungry for Dean’s steadfast, certain grip.

“Do you remember anything else?” Dean asks.

“Just a hospital,” Sam croaks. He still feels parched, even after drinking the entire glass of water Dean handed him. “I remember someone patching up my leg.”

“It wasn’t really a hospital,” Dean says. “You could barely call it a clinic.” He gives a light shake of his head. His expression is strained, mouth pressed tight in a line. “They’ve been keeping this town together, but it’s in bad shape. The people here, they’ve been stuck here for years, Sam.”

Sam swallows. “Years?” he echoes.

“Some of them have been here over a decade.”

Sam turns his gaze to the ceiling, contemplating this. Ten years feels both like nothing and like an eternity. Compared to the time he spent in the Cage, it’s hardly a blip. But in Earth time, ten years ago he was at Stanford. Everything about his life and his own self has changed since then. He doesn’t even feel like the same person he was at twenty.

“Okay,” Sam says finally. He feels Dean watching him closely again, waiting on his reaction, but Sam feels oddly calm. Even if they are trapped here, they’re trapped here together, in safety more or less. “So, maybe we can figure out what’s going on. We figure out what’s keeping everyone trapped here, and we find a way to undo it.”

“Any idea where to start?” Dean says dryly, and Sam makes a face at him.

“I’ve been unconscious and half-dead for the past twenty-four hours,” Sam says. “You be the idea man for a change.”

Dean chuckles. He pats Sam’s good knee and stands. “I’m gonna go see what they’ve got stocked in the kitchen,” he says. “You think you could eat something?”

Sam grimaces. “Uh…”

“Try. I’ll see if they have any bread—you could always keep dry toast down when you were sick.”

“I don’t have the flu, Dean, I have a giant hole in my leg.”

Dean flaps his hand dismissively. “Potato, potahto.” He leaves the room, and Sam listens to his footsteps in the kitchen, the heavy thump of his boots and the creak of the old hardwood floor. Sam’s leg throbs with the beat of his heart, and worry creeps back in now that he’s alone. He can tell without looking that the injury is bad.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust the work that Kelsey and RJ did to patch him up—they’re competent, as far as he could tell. But they’re limited here, without access to materials and medicine. If the injury worsens or gets infected, they won’t have a lot of options.

Sam closes his eyes, and blocks out the thought. He and Dean are both here, and alive, and for now that’s what matters. That’s all that matters, as far as Sam is concerned.

Chapter Text

Kelsey

Moisture seeps into the fabric of Kelsey’s jeans as she kneels in the grass, but she ignores it. Her clothes are already stained by decades of use; some water and dirt aren’t going to make them any worse, at this point. 

She feels around in the garden bed with her fingertips until she finds what she’s looking for: the satiny, fine-petaled bushel of valerian. She plucks a bushel of flowers, snipping the stem neatly near the root, and sets the plant in her basket along with the others. She stands, brushes herself off, and heads for the road.

Beth and her young son, Jonah, are staying at a small house at the center of town, half a mile down the main road from the Big House. Kelsey helped fix it up, a couple years ago, clumsily hammering nails into wood and splattering paint on the walls. At the time, she didn’t understand why they were repairing the house when nobody had arrived in Jericho for a decade. But RJ told her it would be important, someday, that it would matter. And he was right.

Kelsey pauses halfway to Beth’s place, the gleam of the sun on black metal catching her eye. A sleek classic car is parked at Ron’s old mechanic shop and two figures are leaning over the hood, muttering about something Kelsey can’t hear. Ron is too old now to work much, but his daughter, Olive, is in her early twenties and knows her way around an engine. Kelsey recognizes the sleek dark waves of Olive’s hair and the worn overalls she always seems to be dressed in.

Ron has a tow truck that still hauls and a shop full of tools that still work, so he’d dragged the classic black car back to Jericho a few days ago, without even being asked. “Couldn’t just let it sit there and rust,” he grunted, waving RJ off when RJ tried to thank him. “Not one like this.” 

He’d towed back Beth’s mini van, too, but that has been sitting on the side of the road beside the shop for days now, untouched. Olive offered to do some work on it, but Beth only shook her head. “I hate that car,” she said softly, when she and Ron pressed the issue. “Use it for scraps, if you want.” 

Dean, meanwhile, has spent all his free time over the past three days—that is, all the time that he isn’t spending in the Big House—in Ron’s shop, pouring over his Impala. He’d hardly leave his brother’s side, at first, but now that Sam’s leg is healing he’s doing a lot better. “Dean, you’re going to go crazy cooped up in here with me,” he said finally, two days after he and Dean arrived in Jericho. “You need to get out of here. I know you’ve been dying to fix up the Impala. I’ll be fine.” 

Dean was wary, and Kelsey couldn’t really blame him. Physically, Sam was doing better, but she’s caught glimpses of the way he looks sometimes when he thinks his brother isn’t paying attention—moments where he’ll go pale and clutch at the nearest solid object, eyes glazed over as though caught in a spiderweb of distant memories. She’s seen him dig his thumb into his left hand until it draws blood, and still he’ll press, as though he’s searching for something within the pain.

And she hears him scream, on the nights when she sleeps at the Big House. It’s a sound that shook her to her core, rattled her teeth, carved itself into her brain. She hasn’t been able to shake that sound.

Eventually, though, Dean’s restlessness seemed to win out, and he’d caved. Since then he’s been here, elbow deep in engine grease. Olive is usually hovering nearby, lending a hand and unearthing tools from the disorganized heap of boxes and bins. Already, the car looks heaps better than it did when Ron first towed it here.

Dean straightens, wiping his hands on a white rag. “Shouldn’t be hard to fix,” Olive says to him, leaning against the side of the car. “We just need to find the right part. I’ll look through my dad’s old collection tonight.”

“Thanks,” Dean says, nodding at her. He glances over at the road, and catches Kelsey staring. “Hey,” he calls. “Kelsey, right? You seen RJ lately?” 

Kelsey crosses the street to join the two of them at the hood of the car. Dean has been working all afternoon, and his gray t-shirt clings to the lines of his chest. Kelsey bites back a smile; she’s seen the not-so-subtle looks people have been giving Dean all week, and honestly, she can’t even blame them. If Kelsey was into men, she’d probably be hung up on him too.

Even Olive has been giving him a few of those appreciative glances, but Kelsey knows she’d never act on it. Olive and Alan have been together for what seems like forever at this point—Olive might have bad taste in men, but she’s loyal to a fault. 

“Not since this morning,” Kelsey says. “I’ve been running all over town today, though. He might be in the clinic.” 

Dean tosses the cloth on top of his car. He nods at Kelsey’s basket. “What’s all that?” 

Kelsey lifts the basket. “Some medicinal herbs from the community garden. Jonah—Beth’s son—has been having trouble sleeping. I think he’s still recovering from the accident. I thought I’d try and help.” 

Dean lifts his eyebrows. “Plants? Aren’t you a doctor-in-training?” 

Kelsey shrugs. “We have to use what we can out here,” she says. “I wouldn’t try and heal a broken leg with pinecones, but it’s not like we have access to melatonin pills.” She hesitates. “I was going to make tea with it—I could save a little if you want to try some…or Sam, maybe.”

Dean regards her silently for a few seconds, long enough for Kelsey to worry that she’s overstepped. Dean and Sam are largely a mystery to her, not just because of how new they are to Jericho. She used to pride herself on being able to read people, but Sam and Dean seem to be fortressed behind walls of their own making. Separately, they feel distant, miles away from her, wading through memories that she can’t see. Together, though, they seem even harder to reach. 

It’s like they exist in their own world, enclosed within a bubble that no one else has access to. They communicate with a glance or a clap on the shoulder or a frown, whole conversations without saying a word. They always seem to hover within one another’s orbit when they’re together, as though constantly aware of each other on a fundamental, subconscious level. Kelsey has never seen anything quite like it. 

She finds herself feeling envious sometimes. She hasn’t felt close like that with anyone in a long time, and she’s so isolated here in Jericho. She craves that intimacy, that depth of understanding, that connection. Even her father has grown distant over the past few years.

After a beat, Dean smiles at her. His face softens, the lines around his eyes crinkling, and suddenly he’s a lot less intimidating. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll pass. Sam might go for that new-age crap, though—you should ask him.” 

He turns back to his car, closing the hood with a muffled, metallic thud. “How’s the car coming along?” Kelsey asks him. “It looks a lot better.” 

“She’s getting there,” Dean says. 

“Won’t start, though,” Olive interjects. “I think we need to replace a couple things, but it’s gonna be hard all the way out here.” 

Dean shrugs, thumps his knuckles lightly on the metal. “Not that it matters,” he says. “Can’t drive her anywhere—this whole town is barely a couple of square miles wide.” 

“There are old cornfields,” Kelsey says. “We can’t grow anything there anyways—the soil is too acidic.” 

Dean chuckles shortly. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He grabs his overshirt and slings it over his shoulder. “You want a hand bringing that stuff to Beth’s?”

Kelsey only has one basket, and it barely weighs anything. She figures Dean is looking for a reason to come with her, so she smiles and lifts a shoulder. “Sure. Follow me.” 

They say their goodbyes to Olive, and leave the shop behind. The sun beats down on them on the way, pulling beads of sweat from every inch of Kelsey’s skin.

The smell of burning food is the first thing Kelsey notices when she arrives at Beth’s place. She rushes into the kitchen, Dean at her heels, where Beth is frantically waving a newspaper at a smoking, charred block of something on her stove. 

“Shit!” Beth is saying. Her blonde hair is up in a frazzled knot at the top of her head, damp strands of it hanging against her temples. “Shit, shit!” 

Kelsey staggers to a stop, setting the basket of herbs on the dining table. “Beth, what happened?” she says.

“I was just trying to make scrambled eggs,” Beth wails, flinging up her hands in distress as she moves toward the kitchen sink. She turns on the tap, tugging at the sprayer so the hose lengthens. “But Jonah needed me for something, and I got distracted, and I forgot to turn off the burner, and then the butter started to smoke—”

“Whoa, no, no, no,” Dean says, reaching past Beth swiftly to shut off the water. “Grease fire. Water will make it worse.” He looks around. “You got any baking soda?” 

“I, uh—in th-the fridge, I think?” 

Dean pulls open the fridge, rummages for a minute, and emerges with an orange box of baking soda. He snags a potholder off the top of the fridge and uses it to take the pan off the still-hot burner, then he shakes out some baking soda across the smoldering hunk of burnt egg. It sizzles angrily, but the smoke fades, smothered by the white powder. 

Beth exhales in relief, rubbing her hands over her face. “Thank you,” she says breathlessly. “I’m sorry—I panicked. I can barely make mac n cheese without burning the whole pot.”

“Hey, I get it,” Dean says. He tosses the potholder onto the counter and leans back against it. “I burned my fair share of macaroni and cheese back when I was a kid.”

Beth’s shoulders relax a little. She seems relieved. “Your parents probably tried to teach you to cook, though,” she says. “Mine never bothered.”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. He scratches the back of his neck, looking out at the entrance to the living room as he speaks, maybe to avoid Beth and Kelsey’s eyes. “My dad, he uh…he wasn’t really around when I was growin’ up, so I had to figure out how to feed me and my kid brother. Sometimes all we had to last us the rest of the week was a couple boxes of Kraft, so we learned to make do, even burned.” He gives a half-hearted grin. “You get used to the flavor—starts to taste like barbecue if you don’t think about it too hard.” 

It’s the most he’s ever talked about himself or his past, and Kelsey finds herself transfixed, going perfectly still by the dining table as though if she moves she’ll frighten him away. 

Beth blinks. The tears on her eyelashes have dried them into clumps, like old mascara. “My parents weren’t around much either,” she says quietly. “They worked too much. And when they were around they wanted nothing to do with me.” 

Dean gazes at her sympathetically, but he doesn’t speak. A beat of silent understanding passes between them. Kelsey feels distant again, locked out of whatever shared pain they’re connected by. She clears her throat and takes a step forward.

“I think maybe you should stick to microwave meals for now,” she tells Beth. “Less of a hazard.” 

Beth smiles at her. Even splotchy-faced from crying, hair a frizzy mess, she looks effortlessly pretty. The constellation of freckles across her nose and her fine-boned facial features make her look soft, youthful. Kelsey has never looked delicate like that; she’s always been too tall, too broad. Her face doesn’t have the gentle angles that Beth’s does; instead, Kelsey has her father’s wide nose, square jaw, and thick, dark eyebrows.

Beth approaches the table, gazing at the basket of herbs. “Is that the valerian you were talking about?” 

Kelsey nods. “And some other things I thought might help Jonah—and you, too.”

Beth pinches the stem of a bundle of valerian between her thumb and pointer finger, and lifts it to her nose. She sniffs the flowers and smiles, lifting her eyes back to Kelsey’s. “Thank you,” Beth says.

Kelsey feels herself go hot, and knows her face is turning red. She looks awkwardly down at her scuffed boots. “It’s not a big deal,” she mumbles. 

Beth just smiles wider at her. She sets the valerian back down in the basket. “Are you gonna show me how to use it?” 

“Yeah.” Kelsey looks past Beth, at Dean. He’s still leaning on the counter, but he’s looking between them with thoughtful scrutiny. It unnerves her a little—she wants to know what he’s thinking, and his expression is too carefully schooled for her to tell. “Dean, could you get a pot of water going on the stove? Not sure I trust Beth with a burner anymore.” 

Beth reddens, but doesn’t protest. “I’ll go wake up Jonah,” she says. “I finally got him to sleep an hour ago, but if I let him nap all afternoon then he won’t sleep at all tonight.” 

Sam

Sam winces as he edges down the stairs of the Big House one at a time, slowly lowering himself onto solid ground. RJ stands at the bottom on the sun-baked walkway, a pair of crutches held upright in one hand as he watches. Sam has exclusively moved around with the aid of crutches these past few days, but he’d insisted on trying the stairs without them today—the pain isn’t as bad, he argued, and limping around with a pair of crutches isn’t going to help him heal any faster.

The pain isn’t the only drawback, though, it seems. His leg is also horrendously stiff—bending his knee feels like cracking a pair of plywood in two, and his muscles seem to fight back every time he tries to use them. He gingerly puts weight on his bad leg as he comes to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, his breathing heavy and labored like he just ran a mile.

RJ offers him the crutches. “Don’t push yourself,” he says. “No time limit on healing.” 

Sam takes the crutches and hooks them under his arms. “Yeah, but I can’t sit around forever,” he says. “I’ve never been a rest and relaxation sort of person.” 

“Your brother said the same thing about himself,” RJ says with a wry smile. “Sounds like you two moved around a lot, growing up. Never quite shook that, huh?” 

Sam chuckles awkwardly. “No, I guess not,” he says evasively. 

He follows RJ toward the road, slowly limping toward the community gardens. He’s been dying to get a look at them ever since Kelsey mentioned them earlier this week—it’s where they grow most of what they eat, she explained. Sam has spent the last several days reading through every tattered, frayed book lying around the Big House, and he’s desperate to get his hands dirty with something, even if it’s just gardening. His brother comes back from working on the car with an air of tired, accomplished satisfaction, grease-streaked and sweaty, and Sam is honestly kinda jealous.

The gardens are bigger than he expected, but he shouldn’t be surprised, considering they’re supposed to feed so many people. There are ten huge garden beds, each marked with a different color flag, indicating the type of plant. Sam hobbles past each one, glancing at the writing scrawled on each flag, impressed with how well all of them seem to be flourishing.

“Did someone here have experience with farming or something?” Sam asks, turning to look at RJ, who is lingering on the road, apart from the gardens. 

RJ nods. “Alan,” he says. At Sam’s questioning look, he adds, “Tall, skinny kid. Brown hair. He grew up with this sort of thing. Though…” He smiles, then, like he can’t quite fight it back. “Kelsey threw herself wholeheartedly into learning about gardening—seasonal plants, herbs, soil testing, pH levels, you name it. Alan got pretty annoyed with her micromanaging, but our crops are twice as likely to survive when Kelsey has a hand in growing ‘em.” 

The note of pride in his voice makes Sam’s chest ache. He wonders if his father ever spoke of him like that when he wasn’t around, when he couldn’t hear it. He wonders if Dean ever talks about him like that.

Sam gets his good leg underneath him and tries to heft himself off the grass and back onto the road, but his crutch catches in the damp earth. He staggers, putting too much weight on his injured leg, and clenches his teeth around a gasp as the wound throbs fiercely at him in response. It feels like a hot metal rod inserting itself into his flesh.

“Whoa, there,” RJ says in alarm, reaching out to steady him. “Y’okay, Sam? Here, sit down a sec.” 

His voice comes from very far away. Sam lets himself be guided onto a nearby wooden bench, clenching his hands on the rotting edge of the slats as he catches his breath. He rests his leg out in front of him, panting as the pain ricochets up and down the injured limb. It’s temporary, he tries to remind himself, through the pounding in his head and the ringing in his ears. The pain won’t last. It won’t last. It’ll fade.

His hands shake. He clenches them tighter on the edge of the bench, jaw tightened so hard that he can feel himself grinding his teeth. He tries to use the feeling of the wood—solid, real, he knows it’s real, he’s sure it is—to ground himself, but it’s like trying to keep water cupped in his hands. Reality leaks out from in between his fingers, dribbling onto the ground below.

RJ crouches beside him, expression concerned and a little disconcerted. “Sam, you’re looking real pale, kid,” he says. “You do something to your leg?” 

Sam inhales through his nose. He tries to speak, wants to answer, but he can’t quite manage it. The seconds feel like they’re ticking by in slow motion, slower each second, thickening around him like molasses. He isn’t sure if he’s breathing anymore. His vision wavers at the corners, tunneling slowly.

“Hey, dad!” a voice calls from up the road. 

RJ turns, looking over his shoulder. Kelsey is ambling down the road towards them, waving. She’s giving Jonah, Beth’s four-year-old son, a piggyback ride. Walking next to her on one side is Beth herself, and on the other is Dean. 

RJ lifts a hand weakly to wave back. “Heya, Kels, uh…” 

Kelsey spots Sam, mid-panic-attack at her father’s side, and her smile dips. A moment later, Dean follows her gaze, and his expression tightens. He breaks into a jog, closing the last few steps between them in only a couple of seconds. 

“What happened?” he asks RJ sharply as he kneels at Sam’s side, but his eyes are fixed on Sam’s face, taking in his expression. Sam feels the panic’s hold on him loosen at the sight of his brother. The second he’s in view, reality starts to solidify again, like air refilling his lungs after being underwater for a long time.

“I’m not sure,” RJ says quietly. “It might be his leg.” He looks over at Kelsey, who ran over to join them a moment after Dean. “Kels, can you—?”

Dean shoots her a quick, sharp look, as though in warning. She pauses, lifting her eyebrows, and doesn’t approach any closer. Dean, meanwhile, turns his attention back to Sam. He grips both of Sam’s arms, holding on tightly. “Hey,” he says, quieter now, speaking to Sam directly. “Sammy, you’re gonna break the bench in half like that, man. Ease up, will ya?” 

Sam realizes he’s still gripping the wooden bench like a lifeline. He unclenches his grip with effort, his fingers numb with how hard he was holding on. There are splinters left in his palms, sticking out of his skin like shards of glass. He looks down at them blankly, unnerved by the way his hands are shaking without his control.

“Sam? Look at me.” Dean grips one of Sam’s hands in his own, thumb digging into the center of Sam’s palm, where his scar still lingers. Sam’s gaze shoots up to his, and he exhales at the calm, steady expression on his brother’s face. Dean doesn’t say anything else, just stays there, thumb pressed firmly against Sam’s palm, other hand gripping Sam’s elbow, until the blind panic begins to settle and Sam feels himself return to Earth.

He exhales, a shaky sound. Dean smiles at him, squeezes his arm. “Back with us?” he asks. 

Sam nods. Dean gives him a considering look.

“Leg?” he asks.

“It’s fine,” Sam rasps. The pain has lessened, returning to the background ache he’s become used to. “I’m okay.” 

RJ gets to his feet. Sam starts; he’d forgotten RJ and Kelsey were there. He can see Kelsey staring at him over RJ’s shoulder, curiosity burning in her gaze. “We’ll give you some space, Sam,” RJ says pointedly, and guides Kelsey over to join Jonah and Beth, who have hung back near the garden beds.

Dean shifts once they’re gone. Sam has to fight the urge again to grab his arm and cling to him, not ready yet to relinquish his nearness. Dean doesn’t put any space between them, though; he just settles on the bench at Sam’s side, still gripping his arm with one hand. He’s watching Sam’s face carefully, with that scrutiny that should get under Sam’s skin and, instead, makes him feel calm.

“You sure you’re good?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says, nodding, and he mostly means it. “I just…I freaked out for a minute. I’m fine.”

Dean lifts his eyebrows, skeptical. “Dude, you were hunched over and hyperventilating like you were about to hurl. I thought you were gonna pass out.” 

“I was?” Sam says, puzzled. That would explain why he feels so lightheaded.

Dean withdraws his hand—Sam wants to protest, but he has at least a shred of dignity left—and leans back on the bench. He gives a short shake of his head. “Man,” he says. “Scared the hell out of me.” 

He says it almost to himself, muttered practically under his breath. Sam smiles anyway and looks away to try and hide it. He looks over at Jonah, Kelsey, and Beth, who are touring the garden beds now like Sam himself was a few minutes ago. Jonah stops every couple of plants to ask Kelsey questions about each and every one of them, and Kelsey answers him diligently, unerringly patient.

RJ hasn’t joined them, Sam notices. Instead he lingers by the road again, the same way he did with Sam. Sam frowns, and wonders if RJ would tell him why. 

Pain in his hands makes him wince, and he lowers his gaze to them, remembering the shards of wood in his palms. He starts to pick them out, hisses through his teeth at a particularly large one digging into his left palm.

“Easy,” Dean says, reaching over to still his hands. He grips Sam’s wrist, turning his hand palm up between them. “Lemme see.”

He pulls out a multitool and uses it to remove the splinters one by one, letting them drop to the ground like confetti. Sam lets him, watching silently, too tired and in pain to bother trying to protest. Privately, he takes comfort in it—the sure, steady work of Dean’s hands, the familiar warmth of his touch.

Dean carefully removes the largest splinter, presses a strip of fabric to the wound as blood wells up around the cut. He ties the fabric around Sam’s palm and withdraws his hands. “We’ll disinfect those later,” he says. “You good?”

Sam rolls his eyes this time. “I’m fine, Dean.”

Dean lifts his hands in surrender. “Just makin’ sure. Don’t wanna have to drag your unconscious ass into the Big House a second time.”

Sam snorts. He gazes back over at Kelsey, who is deep in conversation with Beth while Jonah explores on his own. Beth throws her head back in a laugh, long blonde hair glowing in the fading sunlight.

Sam glances over at Dean and finds him watching them, too. He smirks. “She’s pretty,” he says.

“Hm,” Dean grunts in agreement.

“You happen to run into her at the mechanic or something?” Sam lifts his eyebrows. “She into cars all of a sudden?”

Dean shoots him an exasperated look. “I went with Kelsey to drop some stuff off,” he says. “Wasn’t looking for a conquest or anything.”

“Since when? You’re always looking for your next conquest.”

Dean rolls his eyes. His gaze drifts back over to Beth and Kelsey, who are giggling about something else now. Sam doesn’t think he’s ever seen Kelsey laugh before. Dean’s mouth twitches up at one corner. “I think she might have eyes for someone else, dude,” he says.

Sam smiles. “I think you might be right,” he agrees.

Dean has taken full advantage of the Big House’s kitchen. He spends the evening helping Bonnie and her brother, Larson, make dinner. They’re supposed to take turns, Bonnie explained at one point, but Bonnie and Larson were the best cooks, and so the task often fell to them.

“We prefer it this way, actually,” Bonnie said. “We’re not gardeners—I myself have what our mother called a black thumb .” She’d exchanged a smile with Larson, a private joke passing between them. “So the others handle growing the food, and Larson and I cook it. Works out for everyone involved.”

They’re thrilled, however, to have Dean with them, especially after he’s proven himself competent. Bonnie and Larson have dozens of recipes they learned from their parents, and Dean busies himself with learning them one by one.

“Our mom would be pissed if she knew we were giving up her cooking secrets to some white guy,” Larson said. “So if you meet her in the afterlife, maybe don’t tell her.”

Dean raised his hand, placing the other over his heart. “Scouts honor,” he said.

Tonight, the first floor of the Big House is filled with the comforting, mouthwatering scent of browning meat as Dean cooks burgers on the stove. He’d originally wanted to grill them, but there wasn’t a grill in working order. “We’re going to have to fix that,” Dean said. “Nothin’ like smoked meat when it’s hot out.”

Sam listens to the sizzle of the meat from the living room, lounging on the couch with a book in his hand that he’s not really reading. Instead, he’s watching Kelsey and Beth play chess—or, more accurately, he’s watching Kelsey play chess with Jonah, who is sitting on Beth’s lap and keeps moving the pieces for her. He seems to be making up his own rules, but Kelsey is an expert at playing along with it.

“Hey, no fair, you pushed my rook off a cliff!” Kelsey says in mock-outrage, throwing up her hands, when Jonah knocks over her piece with a flick of his little finger. “Well, that means my queen is allowed to cross the field of dreams and attack your pawns. I hope you’re prepared to defend your kingdom.”

She takes hold of her queen, tapping it across the board. Jonah giggles and picks up a pawn, and they pretend to sword fight with their characters. Kelsey makes sword-slashing sounds, whooshing her queen through the air.

“Hey, Sam,” Dean’s voice says from the kitchen doorway, drawing Sam’s gaze. Dean is leaning against the edge of the wood, wiping his hands on a white kitchen cloth. “What was that meal called that we ate as kids when we had nothing else around—you know, when we’d just grab saltines and dry cereal, or Spaghetti-os and baby carrots or whatever we could find in the cabinets, and we’d just throw it all together and eat it? What did you call that?”

Sam feels his face redden. “Dude, I was like five years old.”

Dean grins. “Come on, Sammy,” he wheedles. “I know you remember. You gonna leave Bonnie and Larson in suspense?”

Sam huffs and rolls his eyes. “Optimus Soup,” he says.

“Like Optimus Prime?” Beth says, lips twitching.

“I was really into Transformers when I was a kid,” Sam says, defensive.

“Ah, yeah, that’s what it was,” Dean says with a laugh. He turns around to return to the kitchen. “It was Optimus Soup, Bonnie! Can you believe that kid got into Stanford? ”

Sam’s face is still burning once he’s gone. “I was five , Dean,” he yells after his brother, but just hears a cackling laugh in response.

“You got into Stanford?” Beth says.

Sam looks over at her. She has Jonah cradled against her chest, her arms wrapped around his waist and her chin resting on top of his head. Jonah is curled up against her, eyes half-lidded as he starts to doze. It hits Sam like a punch to the chest as he realizes that, at four, Jonah is the same age Dean would have been when their mom died.

He tries to imagine Dean—his six-foot-two older brother made of hardened resolve and muscle and gun-calloused skin—that small and vulnerable, and it makes him hurt. His brother was never given the chance to be taken care of like that; Mary died too soon, and their father didn’t have the capacity for that kind of tenderness. Dean, instead, had to relinquish his need for warmth and comfort, set it aside so that he could take care of Sam.

Dean had collected all that care and tenderness and love he’d never received, and instead given it to Sam. It makes Sam’s throat tighten, choking him.

He clears his throat, realizing that Beth is still waiting for him to answer. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I studied law. Never graduated, though.”

“No?” Beth rocks Jonah lightly back and forth, a movement that seems unconscious, maybe trying to coax him to sleep. “What happened?”

Sam hasn’t thought about college in a long time. After the apocalypse, and the cage, it seems so unimportant, like it happened to someone else, in another lifetime. But the thought of Jess still sends a pang through his ribs. She’ll never be unimportant.

“My, uh, my girlfriend died,” Sam explains. “I needed some time away to deal, and then I just…I didn’t want to go back. It wasn’t who I was anymore.”

Beth and Kelsey regard him with steady sympathy. “I’m sorry,” Kelsey says softly. “When did she die?”

“It was years ago,” Sam says. “She got caught in something she shouldn’t have been…I blamed myself for a long time. But it was just…wrong place, wrong time.”

Kelsey and Beth go quiet. Beth squeezes her arms more tightly around Jonah, her lips pressed into his hair.

“My girlfriend died back when I was in high school,” Kelsey says, and Sam blinks at her in surprise. Kelsey gazes at the surface of the chess board as she speaks, playing with a game piece. “She’s the reason I decided to become a nurse. She got hurt during a party, and she was bleeding really bad, and the ambulance came too late. If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have been able to save her life.”

Beth reached across the board, placing her hand over Kelsey’s. “Oh, Kels,” she said. She smiles gently. “I bet your dad is really proud of you.”

Kelsey half-smiles back and shrugs. She doesn’t answer, but Sam recognizes the look. It’s the same expression he and Dean would make, whenever someone said the same thing about John Winchester.

Sam hasn’t wanted or needed his father’s approval in years, even before he died. But it still hurts sometimes, knowing the ways in which he’s let his family down, knowing he spent years of his life thinking he wasn’t enough. Knowing that Dean has felt the exact same way.

“I think it’s time to put Jonah to bed,” Beth says. She stands, Jonah cradled in her arms. “Kelsey, do you mind giving me a hand?”

“Of course.” Kelsey stands, leading Beth upstairs. Sam adjusts his leg, preparing himself to get up so he can help finish dinner, but Dean’s voice calls again from the kitchen: “Sam, can you grab some of that rosemary stuff that Kelsey is growing?”

“Sure.” Sam grimaces and pushes himself off the couch gingerly. “Where is it?”

“Back porch. It’s growing in a green pot or something.”

Sam limps toward the front door, unlocking the deadbolt and the chain lock, and steps out onto the porch, letting it close behind him. He looks around, but doesn’t see any green pots or anything resembling rosemary. He squints out at the garden beds criss-crossing the yard, and sighs. He remembers seeing a collection of rosemary in one of the garden beds farthest from the house.

“Damn you, Dean,” he mutters, gripping at the railing and slowly descending the stairs, one by one. “You’re lucky I love your cooking.”

He has to use the light on his cell phone to see the garden bed labels properly in the dark, but he finally finds the rosemary, nestled in a corner in a bed at the edge of the woods. He kneels carefully to pluck a few stems, and puts them in the pocket of his hoodie. He’s just straightening when a familiar voice says, “Sammy.”

Sam looks, blinking, toward the line of trees. Dean is standing a few feet away from him, half in shadow, expression inscrutable. Sam frowns at him, a little annoyed. “Dean, I told you I’d get it,” he says. “You didn’t need to follow me out here.”

Dean takes a step closer to him. There’s a benign smile on his face, and it unsettles Sam, for some reason. The smile doesn’t reach Dean’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t have come out here alone,” Dean says. “It’s not safe at night.”

Sam takes an unsteady step back. “You’re not Dean,” he says.

Dean continues to smile placidly at him. Sam doesn’t see his legs move, doesn’t see him walk, but he’s sure Dean—not Dean—comes closer.

“Of course I’m Dean,” Not Dean says. “Don’t I look like him?” He lifts his hand, beckons. “C’mere, Sammy. I want to show you something.”

Sam backs away again. It isn’t the first time Lucifer has disguised himself as Dean, and Sam should be used to it by now. But there’s something so specifically unsettling about his brother, in particular, being used against him like this. It strips the comfort and warmth that Sam usually feels in his presence, leaving Sam fumbling, like solid ground has turned to liquid underneath him.

“Sam, wait,” Dean says, and Sam freezes, like a hook has caught at the center of his chest. Dean just looks at him, that empty smile plastered on his face. Sam glares at him, squeezing his hands into fists at his sides.

“You’re not real,” he says. “Get out of my head.”

Dean is moving closer again, soundless. “I’m as real as you are, Sammy,” he says.

“Don’t fucking call me—”

“Don’t you believe me?” Dean tilts his head. He lifts his hand again, holding it out. “If I was in your head, would you be able to touch me?”

Sam balks, hesitates. He wants to tell Dean—whoever this thing is—to go to hell, but doubt prickles at him. He isn’t acting like Lucifer does. Maybe this is a brand new hallucination, something Sam has never experienced before. But his hallucinations shouldn’t be corporeal. They shouldn’t be solid, tangible. That would make them real, or at least real on a level that he is not prepared to quantify.

He steps forward, lifting his hand, a hazy feeling of confusion muddling his brain. He’s within a few feet of Dean’s outstretched hand now. He holds out his hand, palm hovering within a few inches from Dean’s fingers.

He's not that insane. Not yet. Is he?

Chapter Text

Dean

“Man, what the hell is taking Sam so long?” Dean mutters. He looks away from the stove, where the last of the burgers are sizzling away on the hot pan. Bonnie is tossing a simple coleslaw in a big wooden bowl, meanwhile, arguing with Larson about how much mayo to add to the potato salad.

“Mayo is the best part,” Larson is saying. “I’m going to put as much as I want in there.”

“The best part are the pickles,” Bonnie says. “Honestly. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Bonnie,” Dean calls. Bonnie pauses their argument and looks at Dean over her shoulder. “Can you see Sam out there, see what’s taking him so damn long?”

“Out where?” Bonnie says, confused.

“Outside. You can see the back yard from there, can’t you?”

Bonnie lets the wooden tongs fall out of her hands, one landing in the bowl, the other clattering on the counter and to the floor. The horror on her face makes Dean’s stomach drop. “He’s outside? ” she gasps. “In the back yard?”

“He’s probably out on the back porch, I sent him out there to grab the rosemary, but I bet he got distracted. Maybe he’s by the garden beds. Can you see—”

Bonnie runs for the window, peering out into the night. Dean follows her, bewildered, looking out into the darkness.

Sam is standing at the edge of the yard, a foot from the woods, his back to the house. Facing him, hand outstretched, is a perfect copy of Dean. A copy that Sam is steadily walking towards.

“What the hell?” Dean growls, already backing from the window, reaching for his jacket and the gun he has stowed in the inner pocket. “What is that damn thing?”

“We need to stop him, now,” Bonnie gasps. She runs for the back door, shouting over her shoulder, “Larson, get Kelsey. We need her amulet. Hurry!”

Dean follows Bonnie to the back door, gun clasped in both hands. “Bonnie, what is that thing out there?” he asks urgently.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” she says shakily.

“ Try me .” If it’s a shapeshifter, then bullets won’t do shit. Dean will need to hunt down silver, and fast.

But Sam wouldn’t walk willingly toward a shifter like that. He wouldn’t walk towards anything supernatural like that, even if it was wearing Dean’s face. He thinks he’s hallucinating , Dean realizes, a rock dropping into his gut. He thinks it’s Lucifer he’s seeing, disguising himself as me .

“We call them Moonlights,” Bonnie says breathlessly, pausing with her hand on the back door. “They hide during the day, but they get stronger at night, bolder. If Sam steps beyond the safe boundary of the house, he—” She swallows, eyes haunted, and yanks open the door without finishing.

Dean follows her out into the yard. “Sam,” he yells. “Sammy, stop!”

“Don’t touch it!” Bonnie cries. “Sam, that thing is a monster!”

Sam stills. The fake Dean looks over his shoulder, locking eyes with the real Dean. The monster’s eyes catch the light from the house, glowing unnaturally in the moonlight. A grin splits across its face, too wide, teeth too perfect, lips stretching to the very edges of its head. It closes its hand around Sam’s wrist.

Sam seems to snap out of it, like he’s been caught in a daze. He shouts in pain, as though the creature’s touch is burning him, and tries to pull back, but it’s too late.

The creature’s façade melts away all at once, skin tearing off of its face in tattered pieces and drying out like a fruit left in the sun, until it looks like a husk of a thing, a grotesque, half-rotted corpse on mottled, twisted legs. It looks like it shouldn’t be standing, like it shouldn’t be capable of moving or walking, but the strength with which it yanks Sam toward the line of trees is that of a giant.

Sam is thrown bodily into a tree and staggers, hitting the ground. The creature is on him a moment later, pinning him to the ground, hissing and spitting in his face. Sam thrashes, grabbing at the creature’s flailing arms, but the creature is stronger than him. Its nails slash at Sam’s throat, sending blood spraying across the leaves. Sam’s scream of pain makes Dean’s ears ring.

“ Sam!” Dean lurches after them, but a hand closes around his arm, stopping him. He looks over in disbelief at Bonnie, who shakes her head frantically at him.

“If you cross the boundary too, that thing will kill both of you,” she says, voice shaking. “Kelsey has a weapon we can use against it, but nothing you do will be effective. You’ll just be putting yourself in danger.”

Dean looks, frantic, over at his brother. Sam’s arms are shaking as he struggles to hold the creature back. The thing has his good leg pinned, so Sam twists, getting his injured leg underneath him in an attempt to kick it off. His face goes white with pain at the effort, and Dean sees blood seeping through the fabric of his jeans, knows he’s torn the injury back open.

 Dean moving before he can think through the blind panic, ignoring Bonnie’s protesting cry behind him.

“Hey!” Dean shouts at the creature, lifting his gun. He fires at its back, three shots in quick succession.

The creature yelps and jerks, but doesn’t go down. Instead, it looks over its shoulder at Dean, eyes bright with fury.

“Dean,” Sam chokes, voice tangled with pain. He struggles, both arms caught by the creature’s manacle-like hands. “Don’t—run, just run—”

Dean doesn’t move. “Get away from my brother, you great value zombie,” he snarls.

The creature screeches. And then, like a cat, it launches itself off Sam and straight toward Dean.

Dean hurls himself to the side, but he’s not quite fast enough; the creature’s claws catch his ribs, tearing straight through his jacket and sending stinging pain along his skin. Dean presses his free hand to the wound, lifts his gun, fires again. The bullets hit the thing in its chest, its stomach, even its head, but only seems to annoy it. It doesn’t even seem slowed down.

“What the hell are you?” Dean mutters, both reviled and a little awed. He’s never seen anything like these monsters, and he’s seen a lot.

The creature lunges at him again. Dean fires, but his gun clicks uselessly, out of bullets. He ducks, barely skirting out of the way. The creature reels around, lunges again, and this time knocks him to the ground.

“ Dean!” Sam shouts.

The creature slashes wildly at Dean’s face. He jerks his head out of the way, but he can’t avoid every attack. The creature catches his throat in one disgusting hand, cutting off his breath, and raises the other one, ready to claw his eyes out, spitting angrily. Dean clenches his teeth, gags, braces himself.

The claws never sink into his face. Instead, the creature stiffens, arching its back as though in pain. A long, sharp stick protrudes from the center of its chest, black blood bubbling around the wound. Behind him, covered in blood and pale with pain, is Sam, the other end of the stick gripped in both hands.

Dean scoots out from underneath the creature. Sam clenches his jaw, shoves the stick again, piercing it into the ground so the creature is pinned in place. He falls back, spine hitting the trunk of a nearby tree, panting hard.

The creature isn’t dead; it spits and hisses and struggles, clawing at the ground and thrashing like a fish, screeching furiously. Dean reaches for his brother, kneeling beside him, hands pressing against his shoulders. “Sammy, we’ve gotta get out of here, come on,” he says.

Sam is already nodding, pushing himself away from the tree. There’s blood crusting the side of his neck, staining the collar of his shirt, and he isn’t putting any weight on his bad leg, but they’ll have to worry about that later. Dean hooks Sam’s free arm around his shoulders, heaves him to his feet. Sam grunts in pain, clutches at Dean’s shirt as he staggers, but he walks forward with Dean’s support.

They’ve just barely made it out of the line of trees when a snap and a screech behind them makes Dean freeze. He turns in time to see the creature writhing in place just so, the wooden stake snapping in half. It twists onto all four limbs, turning furious eyes towards Sam and Dean.

Dean shoves Sam behind him, bracing himself, ready to get Sam away from him when the creature lunges. Sam hisses in pain, grips Dean’s arm. He says something, but Dean doesn’t hear, senses narrowing as he fixes on the creature’s coiling limbs.

The second before the creature flies at them, a figure runs out in front of Dean, standing between them. It’s Kelsey, holding something in the palm of her hand. The creature halts an inch from her, as though it slammed into an invisible wall. There’s a flash of light, like an electric shock, and the creature reels back with a howl as though it’s been burned.

“Get back,” Kelsey orders. “In the house. Now!”

Dean doesn’t need to be told twice. He pulls Sam’s arm over his shoulders again, half-drags himself and his limping brother back towards the house. Kelsey follows behind them, still holding out whatever object she brought with her. Dean only catches a glimpse of it; it looks like a clay amulet.

Sam staggers as they reach the stairs, a tight, harsh sound of pain in the back of his throat. “Come on, Sammy,” Dean says desperately. “We’re almost inside. Hang in there, man.”

Sam gasps for breath, white and sweating, but he follows Dean up the stairs one at a time. Dean feels weak with relief once Bonnie shuts and locks the door behind them, nearly collapsing with it.

“The hell…is that thing?” Sam says, staring at the amulet in Kelsey’s grip. “It’s like it…created its own force field.”

“It creates a barrier against the Moonlights,” Kelsey says. She pockets it. “We’ve placed them all over town. It’s the only thing we’ve found that stops those things from getting in.”

Sam lists against Dean’s side. He makes a low, pained sound, which is the only real warning Dean gets before his brother’s legs go out from underneath him. Dean staggers, barely keeping them both from collapsing. “Sammy?” he says, alarmed. “Hey, come on, little brother, I gotcha—”

The couch is too far, so Dean lowers Sam to the floor, leaning his back against the wall. Sam is still conscious, but his teeth are gritted from the pain and he seems like he’s concentrating on breathing, his chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid breaths.

Dean kneels beside him, hands hovering over Sam’s shoulders, his bleeding neck, frightened of touching him and making his injuries worse. “Fuck,” he breathes, eyes darting from Sam’s neck to his leg, struggling to determine which is more serious, which to prioritize, which is losing blood faster. The adrenaline isn’t doing him any favors; his hands are shaking and his brain is filled with mist, clouding his thoughts in an unhelpful blur.

“I’ll get my supplies,” Kelsey says, and rushes off, taking the steps upstairs two at a time. She nearly knocks into RJ, who is descending from the second floor with Alan following at his heels. 

“Kels?” RJ says, but Kelsey doesn’t give them a second glance, too focused on her task. RJ and Alan hurry down the rest of the stairs. “What’s going on? What happened?” 

Dean grits his teeth and doesn’t answer him either. He pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans, double-checks that it’s clean. He always has a handkerchief on hand these days, started carrying one around way back when he and Sam started hunting together again. It’s come in handy more than once, and it’s better than nothing when they’re without a med kit.

Dean considers his brother, decides that Sam’s leg needs more immediate attention. Sam has one hand pressed to his neck, his fingers sticky with blood, but the bleeding seems to have slowed down a little. Dean uses a pocket knife to cut free the fabric of Sam’s jeans, sucks in a sharp breath at the sight of the torn skin underneath. The wound reopened in the fight and is oozing blood uninhibited.

Dean steels himself, presses the cloth firmly against the wound. Sam jerks, but doesn’t fight; instead he makes a low, hoarse sound of pain, almost a whimper. The sound digs deep into Dean’s chest, tearing at him.

“Sorry, Sam, sorry,” he mutters. His hands are still shaking; he applies a little more pressure, fighting to still them. Sam groans and his free hand grips Dean’s wrist, not pushing him away but holding tight enough that it’ll probably leave bruises. “I know. I know, man.” 

“It was a Moonlight,” Bonnie explains, meanwhile, to RJ and Alan. Her voice is quiet and trembling. Dean hears RJ suck in a sharp breath in response. “Attacked Sam. Dean ran out there to try and fight it off.” 

“They nearly did, too,” Larson says. “It was an impressive sight.” 

Sam’s eyelids crack open and he searches Dean’s face, eyes hazy with pain. “Dean,” he rasps. “S-sorry. I’m sorry.” 

Dean blinks at him. “What?” he says, wondering if he heard his brother wrong.

“Wouldn’t have…been attacked…if I’d realized,” Sam whispers. “Thought he—thought you—were a hallucination. Should’ve known better.” 

Dean is shaking his head before Sam finishes speaking. “Not your fault, Sammy,” he says firmly.

“Put you…in danger,” Sam continues, like he hasn’t heard. “Because of my cracked gourd. Could’ve killed you.” 

“Damn it, Sam, stop talking,” Dean growls. “Just focus on keeping your ass conscious, will you?”

Sam laughs softly, a dopey, drunk sound. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” he says.

His smile fades when Dean readjusts his grip, pressing down again on the wound. Sam clenches his jaw, a choked sound at the back of his throat. The handkerchief is nearly soaked through with Sam’s blood now.

Just as Dean is starting to panic again, Kelsey returns, med kit tucked under her arm. She kneels beside Dean, her expression set in level, professional focus. “We’re going to need to redo the stitches in his leg,” she says. “Maybe his neck, too.” 

RJ steps closer. “Kelsey, you might need a hand with that.” 

“Good thing I’ve got two of ‘em,” Dean grits, barely taking the time to cast RJ a look of warning. RJ backs off, hands lifted in surrender. In the five days that Sam and Dean have been here in Jericho, RJ failed to say a word about those Moonlight things, and Dean’s trust towards him has withered away into nothing. He has no idea what else RJ might be keeping from them, or why he might have kept the information about the Moonlights from them in the first place.

“I’m going to need better light,” Kelsey says apologetically. She thinks briefly. “Kitchen?” 

Dean nods. He taps the side of his brother’s face; Sam is still awake, but he looks dazed, like he’s not really aware of his surroundings. “Sammy. Hey, we gotta move you, man, I’m sorry.” 

Sam just tips his head in acknowledgement and shifts, sitting up from the wall. Dean grips his arm, hefts it over his shoulders. Sam gasps and hisses in pain as Dean helps him to his feet. They stagger like that, Kelsey hovering nearby, into the kitchen.

Bonnie and RJ clear off the dining table, but then they retreat to the living room with Larson, giving Kelsey and Dean room to work. Dean lays Sam out on his back on the table, nauseated by the pallid look of Sam’s face and the way he’s panting through the pain, tiny gasps of air like he can’t stand to draw in more. 

Kelsey washes her hands, pulls on latex gloves. “Let me take a look at his leg,” she says.

Dean peels away the blood-soaked cloth. The bleeding has slowed, but it starts to ooze again when the pressure is removed. Kelsey lightly touches the ragged strips of skin, and even that gentle graze has Sam hissing through his teeth. He turns his face away, the cords of his neck taut. Dean gets a better look at the wound gouged into his throat, and feels sick at the way Sam’s hair is plastered against his skin with dried, tacky blood.

“Dean,” Kelsey says, and Dean’s head jerks up. Kelsey must have said his name several times; she frowns at him, half concern and half impatience. Her eyes soften as he looks at her. “Maybe you should go wait in the living room. You might not want to watch this.”

“I’m not leaving my brother,” Dean says. 

“I can help,” a voice says from behind him, and Dean turns. RJ is standing in the entryway. Dean’s vision rims with red at the sight of him.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, he has RJ’s shirt gripped in both fists. He shoves, pushing the man against the wall hard enough that his head knocks into it with a hard thump . 

“ Dean! ” Sam says. Dean ignores him.

“You knew about those Moonlight things,” Dean growls, while RJ stares at him in surprise. “You didn’t tell us about them. We’ve been here for five days, and you didn’t say a damn thing.” 

RJ’s hands land on Dean’s wrists, gripping but not quite pushing him away. “Dean, I’m sorry—”

“My brother could have died!” Dean says furiously. 

“Dean, enough, let him go—” Sam’s voice breaks off with a tight groan of pain, and it’s enough to snap Dean out of his anger momentarily. Sam’s jaw is tight, face turned away as Kelsey gingerly begins removing the torn stitches in his leg, one by one. She seems like she’s tuned out of the argument, focused on her task.

Dean gives RJ a last glare. He releases the man’s shirt, and returns to Sam’s other side. “Kelsey. What do you need me to do?” 

Kelsey nods at the med kit. “Wash your hands and sterilize a needle for me, get it ready for stitches.”

Dean nods. He heads for the sink, turning on the tap with unsteady hands. 

“Sam,” Kelsey says, meanwhile. “I have some painkillers here—they won’t knock you out, but they’ll help.” 

“Don’t you have something stronger than that?” Dean says, returning with his hands clean and dry. 

Kelsey hesitates. “We have some morphine,” she says, “but we try to save it for the most severe cases…for people who aren’t going to make it.” 

Dean looks at Sam’s injuries, the flayed skin and blood, and imagines Sam feeling every pull of the thread through his skin, again . He shakes his head, nauseous. “Regular painkillers aren’t going to be good enough,” he says. 

“Dean, it’s okay,” Sam says. Dean’s eyes snap to his brother’s face; Sam is pale and sweat is beading his skin, but his gaze is steady. “I can handle it.” 

Dean clenches his hands on the edge of the table. He wishes sometimes that he could absorb all the pain his brother will ever feel, hold it in his own body so Sam doesn’t have to experience it. It makes him feel helpless, that he can’t, that he can only protect Sam from so much. That he couldn’t protect Sam from the very worst pain he’d had to endure.

“Sammy…” he says, uncertain.

“I’m good.” Sam reaches out, grips Dean’s forearm, gives him a short nod. “I promise.” He looks at Kelsey. “Do it.” 

Kelsey’s gaze is gentle, warm. She nods back at him. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sam 

Sam is an idiot, really, for nearly getting himself killed. He should have known better, hallucinations or no hallucinations. He’s just relieved that he took the worst of the attack, that the others were mostly unscathed.

At least, he’s relieved until Kelsey is midway through cleaning, sanitizing, and stitching his wounds, and then he’s starting to wish that Moonlight thing had taken him out back at the forest.

He focuses on his breathing, in and out through his teeth in short, haggard gasps. Kelsey cleans the blood from his leg and from his neck with practiced efficiency, but it feels like it takes a hundred years. By the time she’s done Sam is hanging onto reality by a thread, the current pain blending with his memories in a monstrous, haphazard collage behind his eyes.

“Okay,” Kelsey says, voice breathless but steady, “I’m going to sanitize these, and then we’ll stitch them up.” 

A calloused hand presses against the top of Sam’s head, thumb dragging strands of hair away from his sweaty forehead. “Still with us, Sammy?” Dean says.

Sam manages a short, jerky nod. “Yeah,” he grits. “Yeah, I’m—I’m okay.” 

There’s no warning when Kelsey pours the alcohol on his wounds, just the fiery shock of searing pain across his skin. Sam clenches his teeth against an instinctual scream; his hand flies out, maybe trying to push the source of the pain away, maybe to find something to ground himself. Dean catches it, grips his hand tight and firm.

“Easy, Sam.” His voice is close to Sam’s head; Sam clings to the sound of it, desperate for something to keep him grounded to reality. He feels like he’ll spin off into the ether otherwise, his consciousness scattering among the black reaches of the universe. 

“Fuck,” Sam gasps as the burning pain fades. “God, holy shit—this sucks .” 

Dean chuckles, a raw, harsh sound. His thumb drags along the corner of Sam’s eye, clearing away moisture there. Sam hadn’t realized there were tears escaping his eyes; he doesn’t really care. “Yeah, no kidding,” Dean says. “Kelsey’s bedside manner is shit, dude.”

“Save your own damn lives next time, then,” Kelsey says. She picks up the needle and thread. “Just stitches left. Hang in there, Sam.” 

Sam flinches as the needle first pierces his skin. For some reason, that feeling is worse than the burning pain of the alcohol or the searing wrongness of the wound being cleaned. The pinch and tug of the skin makes Sam’s head spin, reality soaring into oblivion again, pain muddling his senses into a mess of then and now, memory and moment.

Sam tries to thrash away, which just sends more sickening pain through his body, down his limbs. A voice swears beside him and a hand catches his wrist. “Sam, take it easy!” Dean’s voice says near his head. “Come on, man, you need to stay still. Please, Sam!” 

The haggard desperation in his voice only makes reality crack more at the edges, splintered shards of jagged glass embedding themselves in Sam’s skin. His gaze whirls, searching, nails digging into the back of his brother’s hand. He can’t see Dean’s face clearly and he wonders if it was ever real, if maybe this is how he finds out it was all an illusion. 

“Kelsey,” Dean says hoarsely. “Please.” 

There’s a rustling sound. A moment later, there’s a prick in Sam’s arm, and his vision dims even further, dizziness overtaking him. He fights again, shaking his head frantically. He doesn’t want to let go yet. He doesn’t want his brother to disappear yet. 

“No,” he breathes, clutching at Dean’s hand, at his arm. “No, not yet—I can’t go back yet—don’t make me go back—” He tries to shake his head, and isn’t sure he manages it. “Don’t disappear. Not yet. Just—not yet. Please .” 

“Sam, hey, it’s okay.” Dean releases Sam’s wrist, rests his hand on Sam’s chest, a solid, grounding weight. “You’re not goin’ anywhere and neither am I, huh? I’ll be right here when you wake up. I promise.”

You gotta believe me .

Sam drifts, overtaken by the harsh pull of sleep. It blankets him, soothes him, pulls him under, and he sinks.

It feels like no time has passed when Sam wakes. He didn’t dream, wasn’t startled awake by nightmares. But it’s dark outside when he opens his eyes, a pitch-blackness that makes him think it’s probably the middle of the night.

He’s lying on the cot that was initially set up for him in the living room, a blanket draped across his lower body. He’s been dressed in clean clothes—a white t-shirt, a pair of sweats—and his leg and neck have been neatly bandaged. They sting and throb when he shifts, but the pain is manageable. 

There’s a snuffling sound beside him, and Sam turns his head. Dean is slumped on the floor beside the cot, face smushed into the mattress near Sam’s shoulder. He’s dressed in clean clothes, too, though they look like hand-me-downs: a blue long-sleeved shirt with some faded logo on it, and a pair of track pants, not things he’d normally wear. Sam smiles, allowing himself to look over the lax, smoothed-out lines of his brother’s face. He looks almost boyish in his sleep, like the weight of his memories lifts from his body.

He reaches out, tapping the top of Dean’s head. “Hey,” he croaks, resting his palm in his brother’s hair. “Gonna give yourself a backache sleeping like that, man.” 

Dean stirs, forehead creasing as he wakes. Sam ruffles his hair and Dean swats at his hand on instinct, still bemused and half-asleep. He lifts his head and blinks at Sam, and then seems to recall where he is. 

“Hey,” Dean says, attempting to sit up and grimacing when it probably pulls at his back. “Sam, you okay, man?” 

“Yeah,” Sam says quietly. “I’m fine.” 

Dean rests an arm against the mattress, studies him critically. “You sure? The stuff Kelsey gave you was strong; you might be a little loopy for a few hours.” 

“I’m okay, Dean. Really.” Sam frowns. “How long was I out?” 

“Uh…” Dean scratches at his head, thinking. “Not that long. Two, maybe three hours?” He grimaces again, but it’s more of a look of apology this time. “Didn’t want to have to knock you out like that, but…you were thrashing, man. It was going to fuck up the stitches, and you could have hurt yourself.” 

Sam thinks, searching for memories after returning to the house, but all he can gather are vague, hazy images of pain and blood and his brother’s voice. “I don’t remember that,” he says. He gives a wry half-smile. “Sorry.” 

Dean waves his hand. “Hey, I can take a few swipes from your gangly ass,” he says.

That reminds Sam of the attack, and his brother’s injury. “Did you let Kelsey check you out, too?” he asks.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Moonlight thing barely nicked me.” 

Sam narrows his eyes. He shifts, sitting up, and leans against the pillows. “Lemme see.” 

Dean rolls his eyes. For a second Sam thinks he’s going to refuse, but then Dean gets to his feet and sits at the edge of the bed. He rolls up the hem of his shirt, showing off the gauze plastered against his ribs. Sam reaches out, touches just the tips of his fingers to the bandages. He can’t see the injury through the gauze, obviously, but it makes him feel better, knowing the wound has been taken care of properly.

“Okay,” he says with a sigh. “Good. Thanks.”

Dean grins, lowers his shirt. “Sammy, you know if you want me to show a little skin, all you gotta do is ask.”

Sam scoffs in annoyance, but his face feels a little warm. He looks out the window to try and hide it, and squints at the darkened forest. “What were those things, you think?” he says softly. 

“The Moonlight things?” Dean lifts one shoulder. “Shapeshifters, maybe?”

“But they didn’t act the same way shifters normally do,” Sam says. “The way they couldn’t cross the tree line until I touched one of them…the way it looked when its skin fell away… those aren’t normal shapeshifter things.” 

“No, they’re not,” Dean agrees, voice low. “So, something new then. Something we haven’t dealt with before.” 

“Which means it’s something we don’t know how to kill, either,” Sam says. He sighs, winces and presses a hand to his side when it throbs. “You think the Moonlights have something to do with the fact that everyone is trapped here in Jericho?” 

“Like they’re the ones trapping everyone here?” Dean says. “I guess it’s possible. But it seems like more than that.” 

Sam nods. He keeps staring at the forest, like if he looks hard enough he’ll be able to make out one of the Moonlights between the trees. But the forest is still and unassuming.

“Still can’t believe we’ve been here five days, and nobody thought to mention a hoard of zombie shapeshifters hanging out in the woods,” Dean grumbles.

Sam looks back over at him. Dean is glaring at the staircase, hands clenched into fists in his lap. “Don’t be too hard on RJ, man,” Sam says. “He probably thought he was doing us a favor. It’s not like he knows we’re hunters.” 

“He put us both in danger, Sammy,” Dean says. His voice is lower again, edged with anger. “You could’ve been killed. If Bonnie hadn’t—” He breaks off, clenching his hands together, jaw working. Sam swallows hard, his throat tight.

“I wasn’t, though,” Sam says. He tries to smile. “Because of you.” 

Dean huffs. He runs a hand through his hair, but his shoulders have relaxed a little, voice lighter when he speaks again. “Yeah, because I ran in to bail your ass out,” he says. “What else is new?”

“I had it under control.” 

Dean tilts his head sideways, casting Sam an unimpressed look out of the corner of his eye, and Sam chuckles. He coughs, grimaces when that pulls especially badly on his injuries.

“Hang on.” Dean stands and crosses the room, returning a moment later with a glass of water. He hands it to Sam, who drinks rapidly, the cool water soothing on his aching throat. Dean lingers after he takes the empty glass, looking down at Sam with a curious, wary look on his face. 

“What?” Sam rasps.

Dean shakes his head. “Nothin’, it’s just…” He hesitates for a brief second. “After Kelsey stuck you with the morphine…before you went under, you kept saying don’t disappear .” He shifts his weight from one foot to another, not quite looking at Sam directly now. “At first I thought you were just, I dunno, rambling, but you kept saying it over and over.”

Sam blinks. “I don’t remember that,” he says truthfully. He still can’t remember much from the bloody, pain-splotched mess in the kitchen. He waits, but Dean doesn’t elaborate. Sam lifts his eyebrows. “Was there a question in there?” 

Dean shrugs. “Look, man, I’m not trying to reopen old wounds here. Just thought you might want to talk about it. That’s all.” 

Sam worries his teeth on his lower lip, catching a stray bit of dry skin and tugging at it. He wants to wave his brother off, like he usually does, but he feels especially vulnerable now, either because of the new injuries or the morphine or the pure exhaustion. Words are falling out of him before he even realizes it.

“When I was, uh…” Sam flutters his hand vaguely. “When I was in…” Dean nods grimly. Sam swallows. “Anyway, you would appear there sometimes. Or…something that looked and sounded like you, anyway. You’d, uh, you’d talk to me, tell me you were there to get me out, and then you’d—” He waves his hand again, fingers trembling in the air.

“Disappear,” Dean finishes in a rasp.

Sam looks at him. Dean is staring down at the sheets where they’re bunched up at Sam’s knees, face drawn with such abject, wrenching pain that it steals Sam’s breath for a moment.

“Yeah,” Sam whispers. “The minute I gave in and reached out, you were gone.”

Dean sets down the empty glass and sits down heavily on the side of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed. Sam watches silently as Dean rubs at his face, pushes both hands through his hair. When he finally lets his hands drop between his knees and turns his face back in Sam’s direction, his expression is a little more controlled, but there’s still an underlying gleam of what Sam had seen before—pain, anger, guilt.

“Sam,” Dean starts. “Look, I…”

Sam is already shaking his head. “Don’t, Dean.” 

Dean’s jaw ticks. His expression cracks a bit, emotion crinkling his brow. “I let you throw yourself in there,” he says roughly. “I didn’t try and stop you. You were down there, with him , and I was just—”

“Stop,” Sam says, injecting all the ferocity into the word that he can in his weakened state. “It was my choice, Dean. You couldn’t have stopped it. I wouldn’t have let you.” He fixes his gaze on his brother’s, voice hard. “It was my choice.” 

Dean searches his face slowly, not speaking. The guilt is still there, hanging heavy off of his body like a weighted blanket. Sam suspects it will always be there, in some form, no matter how many times Sam reassures or placates him. Dean’s sense of duty towards him is ingrained so deeply, so fundamentally, that there’s no separating him from it. Sam wishes sometimes that the responsibility wasn’t such a weight, that he could take some of the burden, ease it away from his brother. 

But Dean would never let him. And it was that sense of duty—the tenacious devotion and faith Dean has for him against all odds, the sheer breadth of it—that freed Sam from the Cage. It’s a burden and a curse and it’s a miracle and a reason to keep going. It’s what Sam clings to, what grounds him, and what would send him spiraling off into oblivion if he lost it. Sam doesn’t know who or what he’d be without his brother, and he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to be that person.

“You got me out,” Sam says, voice quiet again, crackling with suppressed emotion. He swallows hard. “That’s what matters. We can figure out the rest of it.” He manages a wavery smile. “We always do.”

Dean’s mouth tugs up at the corner. Some of the heaviness eases from his eyes, from his body, and it makes Sam’s chest warm. Dean nods and reaches back, rests a hand on Sam’s ankle, maybe to reassure himself, maybe Sam, maybe just for the sake of the connection. “Yeah,” Dean says, rough and quiet. “Yeah, Sam.” 

Kelsey

“You told me you’d explained everything to them,” Kelsey says.

RJ looks down at the floor, hands folded between his knees. He’s sitting at the edge of Kelsey’s bed, but he hasn’t looked at Kelsey since the living room. His shoulders hang heavy with guilt now, but it isn’t enough to assuage Kelsey’s anger. 

“Kels…” he murmurs.

“You lied to me,” Kelsey continues, ignoring him. “You said you’d told them about the Moonlights, but you lied. Why?” She throws up her hands. “Why would you keep it from them?” 

“I swear, Kelsey, I was going to tell them,” RJ says. He looks up at her, finally, apologies shimmering in his eyes. Her chest aches, but it still isn’t enough to soften her. “You remember what happened when Rodney showed up in town. What happened to him when we told him too soon.”

Kelsey swallows, hands clenching into fists at her sides. Rodney had staggered into town three years ago, covered in dirt and half-delirious, thirty minutes before sunset. RJ had dragged him into the Big House, but Rodney fought him, paranoid, frightened. RJ explained about the Moonlights on that very first night, explained why it was dangerous to be outside after dark, and Rodney hadn’t believed him.

Kelsey remembers, so vividly, the sight of Rodney standing at the edge of the woods three days later, a wild look in his eyes, a grin on his weathered face. I’m going to prove it to you! he’d cried, when Kelsey and Larson and Bonnie had all begged him to come inside. I’m going to prove they aren’t real! Once I prove it, you can’t keep me trapped here anymore!

RJ, when he’d come downstairs and realized what was going on, had lurched into motion. He’d run at Rodney, ready to drag him back inside. Kelsey had screamed at him to stop, and RJ hadn’t listened. 

They’d been too late. The Moonlights had appeared like spectres, dragging Rodney into their embrace, tearing into his skin while his grin had twisted into horror. RJ had nearly been caught by them himself, had almost been torn apart in an attempt to save Rodney’s life.

RJ’s fingers drift, now, to the long white scar on his arm, where a Moonlight had clawed at him that night. Kelsey’s legs weaken at the memory—Rodney’s screams, RJ’s screams, Rodney’s blood, RJ’s blood—and she staggers back a couple of steps, leaning on the windowsill of her room. She braces both hands against the rough wood and exhales.

“Rodney was struggling,” she whispers. “He had serious mental health issues. It was different.”

“And you think those Winchester boys don’t?” RJ says, lifting his eyebrows. “Especially Sam?”

Kelsey flinches at the reminder, thinking of Sam screaming awake from nightmares, his hyperventilating panic on the garden bench, his pain-filled gaze as he’d been put under, fingers white-knuckling his brother’s arm as he’d begged in a frantic whisper: don’t disappear. Not yet.

“But it’s not just them,” Kelsey says. “Beth and Jonah don’t know either. Jonah is so young—he wouldn’t have been able to keep himself safe. He would have been killed in a heartbeat.” 

“I know.” RJ’s voice is heavy. “Kels…I’m sorry.”

Kelsey wants to cling to her anger, but her father looks so defeated, so exhausted, that she can’t find it within herself. She lifts her eyes to the ceiling, blinks back tears. She doesn’t cry, not ever, but the thought of Beth and Jonah being the ones caught in the Moonlight’s claws—as opposed to Sam and Dean, who had been more than capable of holding their own—makes her throat tighten with a fierce emotion that she doesn’t really recognize.

“I’m going to tell Beth everything,” she decides. “Tonight. Or tomorrow, at least. As soon as possible. They deserve the truth.” 

RJ nods. He’s looking somewhere behind her, staring at the wall. Kelsey feels another surge of annoyance by it—he won’t even look her in the eye, even now. Even after all the years they’ve been trapped here, sometimes he still feels like a stranger to her.

Kelsey leaves the room without another word, leaving the door swinging behind her. Her bedroom is on the top floor of the big house, in what’s really just an attic; it’s stuffy up there, and the cool air on the floor below makes her breathe a sigh of relief. She goes down another flight of stairs to the second floor, and then pauses on the landing. There’s a figure crouched halfway down the stairs, leaning against the railing.

Kelsey smiles, recognizing the swath of messy blonde hair. She descends the stairs silently, sitting on the step behind Beth, and touches her shoulder. Beth jumps, whipping her head around. She smacks Kelsey in the arm. “Kelsey, you scared me!” she hisses.

“Sorry.” Kelsey rests her arms on her knees, leaning over to peer between the slats on the banister. She can just make out the figures of Sam and Dean in the living room; Sam is awake and sitting up against some pillows, Dean settled at the foot of the bed with his back leaned against the wall. His legs are draped over Sam’s, knees bent so he isn’t putting any weight on his brother’s limbs. They’re talking in low, quiet voices while Dean deals out a deck of cards between the two of them. 

“Are you spying?” Kelsey asks.

Beth flushes. “No,” she whispers back. “I just…Bonnie told me about what happened, and I wanted to see for myself that they were both okay.” 

“I’m surprised Bonnie had to tell you. The whole house probably heard the commotion.” 

“I heard it.” Beth wraps her arms around her knees. “I was with Jonah. We hid under the covers to keep the sound out—I told him we were playing a game. I think it made him feel better, but he was upset. Wouldn’t go to sleep for ages.” 

“He’s out now?” 

Kelsey nods. “I tried to sleep too, but I guess I was rattled.” She looks down at the Winchester brothers again and worries her lower lip between her teeth. “Bonnie wouldn’t tell me the details. Just says that Sam was attacked. Is he…will he be okay?”

“Yeah. Wasn’t pretty, but he’ll make it.” 

They sit in silence for a few moments. Kelsey watches as Dean sets a card, face-up, on the blanket. She can’t see what it is, but she can hear Sam’s annoyed voice as he smacks away his brother’s hand: “You can’t play that card, man, it’s the wrong color. Take your card back.” 

“No. Winchester rules, dude, it’s legit.” 

“What the hell are you talking about? How can there be Winchester rules when we’ve never even played Uno before?” 

“Not my fault you didn’t ask. Your turn, bitch.” 

Sam mutters something under his breath and makes a face, but draws a card, and then another. Dean chuckles and presses a hand to his ribs when it apparently pulls at his injuries. “Serves you right,” Sam snipes. He draws another card. And another card. “I’m going fucking kill you.” 

Beth leans back against Kelsey’s knees. She’s smiling softly. “I was so nervous around them at first,” she whispers. “They seemed so intense, dangerous even. But they’re different like this, when it’s just the two of them.”

Kelsey nods. She thinks of the pale, wrenched fear on Dean’s face when Kelsey was dressing Sam’s wounds, of the look of determination in his face when he’d run after the Moonlight with a gun in his hands, of the quiet words of comfort he’d murmured by his brother’s head when they’d first brought Sam into the clinic. 

“I don’t understand it,” Kelsey mutters. “Dean grabbed that gun and used it like he’s been doing it for decades. And Sam stabbed that Moonlight with the strength of two normal people. They know how to fight. It’s like they’ve been trained for it. But…” 

She trails off, watching as Sam sets down his final card, emptying his hand, a triumphant smile on his face, watches as Dean gathers up the cards from the bed and throws them at his brother, accusing Sam of cheating while Sam accuses him back of making up rules. 

“But they…they care ,” Beth finishes softly. “So much. About each other, but also about the rest of us.”

Kelsey nods. She feels certain of it, somehow, in spite of the calm competency of Dean’s hand around a gun, in spite of the way they look at each other with secrets hidden in silent conversations, in spite of the weight and the trauma they both carry. 

“Yeah,” she agrees in a whisper, and lets her hand settle on Beth’s head, fingers stroking softly at her hair. “More than I think any of us realize.”

Chapter Text

Dean

“Dean, I can’t figure this stupid thing out, man!”

Dean rolls his eyes without taking his attention away from the apple pie he’s pulling, very carefully, out of the oven. Sam’s voice is downright whiny—he’d spent most of the day grumbling and huffing, making a face every time Dean asked him to grab plates or find matches or help set up tables. “Why are you putting so much effort into this?” he’d asked, folding his arms, the third time Dean had called him into the kitchen for a hand.

“Dude,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Ron got us a functioning grill, and you think I’m going to let it just sit around?” He’d poked Sam in the chest for emphasis. “We’ve been here three months, man. These people are overdue for a good barbecue, and so are we.”

Dean sets the pie on the counter and blows out a breath, giving it an appraising once-over. The crust is golden brown, the sugar crystals creating an attractive carmelized sheen over the top. The crimped edges, which he spent far too long crafting, have held up well under the heat of the oven. He can’t tell what it tastes like yet, but it looks immaculate.

He grins, pleased with himself, and turns the oven off. He tosses aside his oven mitts and follows the sound of Sam’s voice to the backyard. 

Sam and Beth are hunched over the grill, which is still smoking steadily, to Dean’s relief. Beth is a foot and a half shorter than Sam, and the visual of the two of them next to each other makes Dean, as usual, fight back a laugh. “You didn’t open the grill, did you?” he asks as he comes closer, instead aiming for something stern.

Sam and Beth look over at him. Beth looks frazzled, wisps of her blonde hair in a disarray, but that’s what she looks like anytime someone asks her to do any form of cooking. Sam isn’t much better; he’s sweaty from the afternoon heat and his hair is sticking to the back of his neck in a way that has to be uncomfortable. Dean imagines the feeling of his own hair plastered against his neck and shudders, and wonders if Sam will finally let him at his hair with a pair of scissors. 

“No, we didn’t open it,” Sam says. “I opened the lower vent thing like you said, and went to check the thermometer, but it wouldn’t turn on, so—”

“I told you to open the upper vent, idiot, not the lower one,” Dean says, shouldering in to adjust the grill. “Were you even listening to me?” 

Sam huffs. Red-faced from the heat and indignation, hair growing more straggly by the minute, he looks almost comical. “I told you not to put me in charge of anything food-related, man,” he says. “Especially a grill.”

Dean presses the button on the thermometer, prepared to tell his brother off for being electronically-challenged—but, sure enough, the thing doesn’t turn on. Dean frowns. “Damn,” he mutters. “What was the last reading you got?” 

Sam lifts his eyes to the sky, sighs heavily, thinks. “I dunno…185? 190?”

“Well, was it 185 or 190? Could be the difference between dinner and food poisoning, man.”

“I told you not to put me in charge of the food!” 

“All right, look, I’m going to see if Ron has another food thermometer, okay?” Beth says, when Dean opens his mouth to continue arguing. “You two finish your little domestic while I’m gone. But you’d better be ready to be nice to each other by the time I get back or so help me, I’ll handcuff you to separate sides of the yard.”

She stomps off without another word, winding her way through the mismatched collection of tables and chairs that had been dragged outside earlier this afternoon—folding tables, coffee tables, even a square side table that Kelsey lugged from her bedroom down two flights of stairs. Sam and Dean watch Beth go, stunned into silence. “Man,” Dean says finally. “She’s really got that mom voice down, don’t she?” 

Sam smiles a little to himself. “That kid’s going to be in for a hell of a time when he hits his teenage years,” he says. “She’s not going to put up with any shit from him.” He sighs. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be so pissy. I think the heat is getting to me.” 

Dean shrugs awkwardly, still looking in the direction of Beth’s retreating back so he doesn’t have to meet his brother’s gaze. “Well,” he says. “You haven’t been sleeping much lately, either. Can’t blame you for being kind of a bitch.”

Sam rolls his eyes, but his smack to Dean’s shoulder is halfhearted. “I got some sleep last night,” he says.

“I know that’s not true,” Dean says. “We sleep in the same room, dude. Your bed was empty when I woke up at three in the morning, and I could hear you puttering around downstairs.” 

Sam purses his lips. He looks down, brow furrowed, but doesn’t deny it. Until recently, Sam was actually sleeping better, once his leg had healed up a little, and once they’d moved into a real bedroom. Kelsey and Dean had spent an afternoon cleaning out a second-floor room for the two of them, which previously was acting as a storage space. They’d dragged two mattresses into the empty room, propping them on makeshift wooden frames, and the result was surprisingly pleasant. 

“Are you sure you don’t mind sharing a room?” Kelsey had asked, when she and Dean brought Sam upstairs to take a look at the finished product. Sam was still limping pretty badly at that point, and he had to grip Dean’s shoulder in the doorway to keep his balance, but his face broke out into a dimpled smile when he saw the work that Kelsey and Dean had put into the room.

Dean shook his head. “We’re used to it,” he said.

Sam had nodded in agreement, and Kelsey had shrugged, and just like that the room was theirs. Privately, Dean actually prefers sharing a room with Sam—he sleeps better when he can hear Sam’s steady breathing from a few feet away, when he knows his brother was alive and close by. He’d never admit that aloud, obviously, but he also knows with relative certainty that Sam, too, sleeps better when Dean is in the room with him. 

So, what the hell. If they’re both going to feel better sharing a room, then why fight it? 

Over the following couple of months, the wall across from their beds became crowded with bits and pieces of information they’ve managed to uncover about Jericho: the timeline of its existence, the order of its residents as they appeared, the facts they’ve been able to glean about Moonlights. The wall is plastered now with newspaper clippings and photos and sticky notes, but Dean doesn’t feel any closer to solving the mystery than they were three months ago.

And yet—and yet. 

The urgency he’d felt when they first arrived, telling him to get out and get back to their lives, has dimmed over time. Trapped as they are, there are worse places to be stuck. Dean spends his time in Ron’s shop, helping with repairs, or cooking huge meals with Bonnie, or doing woodwork with Larson. He hangs out with Kelsey and Beth and Sam, and goes to bed pleasantly sore from manual labor. Sam, meanwhile, spends his time out in the gardens, tending to Jericho’s animals, and reading through the collection of books they’ve amassed in the Big House. He has dirt perpetually under his nails and goes up stairs very slowly, but he sleeps for longer, and has fewer nightmares, and smiles a lot, more than Dean can remember before. 

So, Dean still wants to escape this place. Obviously. But he’s also not in any rush.

“You know you can tell me,” Dean says now, voice lowered slightly so he won’t risk being overheard. “When you’re, you know…having a rough time.” He pauses, scratching jerkily at the back of his neck. “I could help.” 

Sam looks at him for a moment, his gaze oddly searching, like he’s waiting for Dean to make fun of him or take it back or something. Dean knows he isn’t the most emotionally vulnerable person on the planet, but he’s trying, okay. He likes a problem that he can fix, something hands-on and tangible that he can solve like clicking puzzle pieces together, and what Sam’s going through isn’t that. If Dean can’t fix it, can’t make Sam better, then he’s going to make sure Sam isn’t suffering all alone.

Sam sighs. His expression softens, but it carves lines of exhaustion into his face, throwing the shadows under his eyes into sharp relief. “I know,” he says quietly. “You do help, Dean.” 

“Not enough,” Dean mutters. He winces after he says it, recoiling from the self-centered nature of the words. As if his own ego, his need to be needed , matters right now.

“Just having you there, knowing you have my back,” Sam says. “Knowing you aren’t going to give up on me. That helps more than you realize, Dean.”

Dean does understand that, actually. He remembers the days after returning from his own little excursion in Hell, and the way Sam’s presence had grounded him, just the knowledge that he was there. Dean runs his hand over his mouth and his jaw, trying to hide whatever shit his expression is doing right now. He clears his throat and says, “I, uh…I’m gonna go get the other stuff from the kitchen. Ribs should be ready in just a bit.” 

Sam nods. “I’ll give you a hand,” he says. 

The spread, once everyone in town has handed over their contributions, is pretty spectacular. Bonnie brings her famous baked mac n cheese, the edges of the pan crispy and brown and the noodles so drenched in cheese sauce it should really be a felony. Kelsey provides a lopsided chocolate cake that she and Beth attempted, promising that it will still taste good. Others still bring offerings of coleslaw, baked beans, collard greens, corn, and fresh bread. Dean finishes his first plate in record time and then speeds to the table to grab another, filling it with everything he missed during the first round. 

The ribs, meanwhile, turn out excellently. They fall off the bone in exactly the way Dean was hoping they would, and the grill has given them a pleasant smoky flavor on top of the dry rub he’d used. Even Sam, who isn’t much for red meat, scarfs three of them down and says they’re the best ribs he’s ever eaten. 

“They’re probably the only ribs you’ve ever eaten,” Dean says, flicking a piece of corn at his brother across the length of the folding table. “Last time you willingly had barbecue was when we went to that huge honky-tonk place in the middle of Texas like five years ago, remember that?” 

Sam makes a face at the memory. They’d followed signs off the interstate for the place, which promised the best ribs in Texas. Dean had obviously been obligated to test that claim. 

“The food wasn’t even that good,” Sam says. “You said the ribs were dry and that the potatoes were tasteless.” 

“Yeah, but the place had everything ,” Dean says. He grins. “Two dollar beers, arcade games, karaoke, line dancing.” 

“You line danced ?” Kelsey says from the other corner of the table, eyes lighting up in glee.

“No,” Dean says, at the same time Sam says, “Yep.” 

They look at each other across the table. Dean narrows his eyes. Sam’s mouth twitches at the corners.

“You don’t remember?” Sam says. “You were like six drinks in when you pulled me into the floor and insisted we try it out.” 

Oh. Dean does remember that, vaguely. Or, more specifically, he remembers staggering over his own feet in an attempt to learn the steps, Sam wobbling like a baby giraffe next to him, until they’d both given up and started doing whatever the hell steps they felt like. Dean remembers being shooed off the floor after several songs of that, Sam apologizing to the staff between bursts of laughter, Dean hurling curses over his shoulder as they’d exited the bar into the warm Texas night air. 

Sam suggested they sleep the booze off in the Impala, but Dean had refused. Instead, they’d stretched out side-by-side on the earthy, sun-baked desert, staring at the night sky, entranced by the stars crowding the inky blackness. Dean remembers thinking, as he drifted off, Sam already snoring next to him, that he’d never seen so many stars in one place before.

He coughs, blinking out of the memory. He throws a requisite glare in his brother’s direction, but it’s hard to be too embarrassed by the memory when it inspires such warm, uncomplicated feelings in him. “Yeah, and I nailed all of those dances,” he says. 

“You somehow managed to step on both of my feet within the span of five minutes,” Sam says. “ And you got us kicked out. Do you know how hard it is to get kicked out of a Texas bar? You could walk in with a machine gun and they’d ask if you wanted a cosy for it.” 

“Texas?” Ronnie sits down at one of the empty spaces at their table, Larson taking the spot beside her. Both of them set down plates loaded with food. “I thought you boys were from Kansas.” 

“We are,” Sam says quickly. “We, uh…we moved around a lot.”

Bonnie takes a bite of coleslaw, chewing slowly, gazing at the two of them. Waiting for more detail. Sam looks helplessly at Dean, mouth pinched. Dean shrugs. They haven’t really talked about it, how much to share with these people, how much to keep private. But they’ve been here three months, and Dean is getting tired of dodging questions.

“Our dad traveled for work,” Dean supplies. “He wasn’t around much. He’d cart us from town to town, stay a few weeks, and then we’d move on. Basically lived out of our car for years.” 

Sam smiles. A tinge of sadness darkens his eyes, but the smile itself is genuine. It’s a relief, sometimes, that their dad can come up in conversation now and it doesn’t have to turn into a tense, heated argument between them.

“Army?” Larson asks.

“Marines,” Dean says. “But that was before we were born.” 

“Your mom?” Bonnie asks. Her gaze is disarmingly warm, the kind of expression that tears Dean’s hardened, protective walls to shreds. “Did she travel with you?” 

“She’s dead,” Dean says. “Died when Sammy was just a baby. House fire.” 

“Oh.” Bonnie’s voice is soft, sad. But there isn’t pity in it, nor is there pity in Larson’s face, or Kelsey’s. They all just look on steadily, a shared understanding in the grim set of their expressions. “You two must have grown up lonely, then. Mom gone, dad always working…”

Sam shakes his head. “We had each other,” he says, before Dean can answer. “Even when it was hard, we knew we could rely on that.” He looks across the table at Dean, gaze fond, and Dean’s jaw locks up, his throat tightening into a fist. “Dean raised me more than our dad ever did. More than he should have had to.” 

Dean wants to protest on instinct—that he was only doing what he could, that it was rarely enough, that Sam is plenty fucked up because of him—but his jaw is still locked up tight and he can’t speak. He has to look away from his brother’s face, turning his gaze away across the gardens as his eyes sting. 

“Larson and I grew up like that, too,” Bonnie says. “Mom and dad hardly around. We took care of each other.” She pats his hand. “It’s thanks to me that Lars knows a damn thing about cooking. I was the one who taught him how to use a knife.” 

Larson gives her a wry look. “Only ‘cause Ma forced you to teach me.” 

At the word knife , Kelsey’s eyes snap to Dean, piercing. They look at each other for a long moment, but Kelsey doesn’t say anything, just slides her gaze away. 

Later, as the sun is beginning to dip, someone puts on an old CD player and blasts music, and a handful of people, tipsy from cold beer and full of hearty food, begin to clumsily dance in the sun-baked streets. Alan and Olive spin around one another with surprising grace, holding each other tightly with an unusual amount of affection. Bonnie and Larson, apparently inspired, are teaching line dances to some of the younger residents.

Dean leans against the fence post beside the Big House and watches as Beth tries to teach Sam the steps to some sort of slow dance. It’s wildly amusing, the way Sam’s long limbs shuffle back and forth in an attempt to match Beth’s delicate, careful steps. Beth is clearly trying very hard not to laugh, her face pink and her eyes twinkling. 

The fence creaks, and Dean looks over. Kelsey has joined him, a fresh beer in hand. She lifts it into the air. “Nice party,” she says.

“Thanks.” Dean clinks his bottle against hers. They sip slowly, watching the dancers together. Dean can feel subtle tension radiating off of her and knows she’s going to ask him something. He waits for her to spit it out.

“Your brother can’t dance for shit, can he?” Kelsey says.

Dean smirks. He wishes for the millionth time he had a working cell phone, so he could take a photo of Sam’s awkward, wobbling legs. It would be ammunition against him for a solid decade. “Didn’t have the funds for fuckin’ finishing school,” he says. “Too busy finding enough food to last the rest of the week.” 

Kelsey stares at him. Dean avoids her gaze, sips his beer slowly. He waits again.

“But you had time to learn how to handle a gun, huh?” Kelsey says.

Here we go . “Sure,” Dean says, shrugging. “Had to.” 

“Why?” Kelsey presses. “You were an expert with that thing, like it was second nature. You don’t get that way by shooting cans off your neighbor’s porch in high school.”

Dean sighs under his breath. “What’s your point?” he says.

Kelsey lifts her free hand in a helpless, frustrated gesture. “I just—I want to understand. You and Sam, and the way you grew up, and your dad carting you around the country like luggage—”

“Easy,” Dean grits, but Kelsey doesn’t let up.

“I want to understand why,” she says. “The two of you know more than you’re letting on, I can tell. And if we want a shot at getting the fuck outta here…” She swallows, the shadows on her throat bobbing. “If we want a chance to get back to our lives, then I think we need to be honest with each other.”

“Well, what about you?” Dean counters, narrowing his eyes at her. “You and RJ clearly have some shit you’re not dealing with. You wanna talk about daddy issues, try lookin’ in a mirror.” 

He feels bad, the second he says it, but Kelsey doesn’t flinch. She rubs her thumb along her beer bottle, gathering condensation on her skin. “We were never that close,” she says slowly, speaking to the rim of the bottle. “My mom died in childbirth, and I don’t think he knew how to raise me by himself. Doesn’t help that I look exactly like my mom—spitting image, I’m telling you. It’s scary.” She presses her thumb harder against the glass of the bottle, until the digit starts to turn white. “He’d look at me sometimes like he was seeing a ghost. Like he was seeing my mom. And then he wouldn’t look at me at all for days at a time.” 

Dean listens, watching her expression. A familiar ache presses in between his ribs. It’s the kind of loss he’s intimately familiar with.

“But he was so god damn protective of me,” Kelsey continues. “Wouldn’t let me out of his sight, hardly. Homeschooled me, even. And I didn’t get it, why he kept such a close watch on me when it’s clear he never even—”

She stops. Never even wanted me , Dean finishes in his head.

“Anyway, I, uh…I ran away from home a few times,” Kelsey says. “But he’d always find me. And then, eventually…” She gestures vaguely to their surroundings. “There was nowhere to run anymore.”

“Because you were trapped here,” Dean says.

Kelsey nods. She takes a drink from her beer, swallowing loudly. “At first, things were actually getting better, I thought. RJ wasn’t keeping me under his thumb all the time, so I felt more free than I ever did before, even trapped here like we were. He seemed different, somehow, like a weight was lifted off him. We set up the clinic, and he even let me handle patients on my own. But lately…” She trails her eyes over the crowd, letting them land on her father, who is sitting on a bench beside the gardens, alone. His shoulders are slumped over, like he’s carrying a heavy backpack, as he watches the dancers. “Something’s changed. He’s distant again, hardly looks at me. I can’t figure out why.” 

“What do you mean lately?” Dean asks.

Kelsey thinks, pursing her lips. Her eyes snap to Dean’s, a frown creasing her forehead. “When you and Sam and Beth arrived,” she says. “That’s when I started to notice it.” 

Dean ponders this. A prickling feeling runs itself over the back of his neck. It’s an instinct he’s learned not to ignore, but right now it has no place to go, no obvious threat to attack, and he’s tempted to chalk it up to paranoia. 

“Me and Sam could try and talk to him for you,” Dean offers.

Kelsey shakes her head. “It’s not your problem to fix. Look, I’m telling you all this because—I just want you to know I get it, that’s all. That family is complicated, parents especially. I love my dad, but I also resent him sometimes. I appreciate him for the fact that he raised me, but I wish things had been different.” She splays out her hands, still holding her beer, and lifts her shoulders. “That’s all.” 

Dean looks out over the lawn again, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Beth and Sam have given up on dancing and are rummaging in the cooler at the other end of the garden. Dean’s hand twitches on his drink; it’s still a few hours to sundown, but he doesn’t like seeing Sam that far away, that close to the tree line. 

“Kelsey, look,” Dean says finally, voice low. “What you gotta know is that there’s a lot more out there than just Moonlights.” He pauses, adds for emphasis, “A lot more.” 

Kelsey stares at him, eyes wide. She doesn’t look frightened, though, exactly. 

“Sam and I, we hunt them. Have our whole lives. Our dad did, too. We’ve seen a lot of evil shit, and this?” Dean twirls his finger in the air, indicating vaguely towards the town. “This is new territory, even for us.” 

Kelsey searches his face. Curiosity is back, burning bright in her gaze. She reminds him of Sam, six years old and filled to the brim with questions, haranguing Dean at all hours of the day with demands for answers.

“What else is out there?” she whispers. “What else is real?” 

Dean doesn’t really want to give her the play by play, but he’s in a little too deep now. “Ghosts,” he says. “Werewolves. Vampires.” He pauses. “Demons.” 

Kelsey’s mouth drops open. She clutches at the wood of the railing, swaying a little. “I normally wouldn’t believe you,” she says. “But…I mean, I’ve seen them. The Moonlights. They’re not human.” She shudders. “ Demons? ”

“Oh, yeah. Big time.” 

Kelsey chugs the rest of her beer, downing it like a pro. Dean lifts his eyebrows, impressed. Kelsey throws the bottle into the grass once she’s finished, sways again, and then seems to right herself, shoulders squaring. “If we figure out what those things are,” she says. “If we figure out how to kill them…could we get out of here?”

Dean hesitates. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe. Couldn’t hurt.”

“Then I’m going to help you.” Kelsey’s eyes shine fiercely in the dimming light, reminding Dean again of Sam, stubborn and furious and demanding that twelve was old enough to tag along on a hunt. “Will you teach me how to use a gun?”

Dean blinks, surprised. He sips his beer, considers. “Sure.” 

Kelsey beams. She opens her mouth, but then snaps it shut again, her cheeks going the slightest bit red. Dean follows her gaze and finds Sam approaching his left shoulder, Beth trailing just behind him. “Kels!” Beth says at once, running past Dean to grab Kelsey’s hands. “Come on, I’m going to teach you how to dance.” 

Kelsey resists, face turning redder, eyes flickering to Sam and Dean as though pleading for help. “Uh,” she says, “I can’t really dance, Beth.” 

“You can’t be worse than Sam,” Beth says, ignoring Sam’s indignant huff. She pulls again, and this time Kelsey staggers along with her, the two of them traipsing back into the road.

“Don’t,” Sam says, when Dean opens his mouth. “Don’t you dare.” 

Dean fights back a grin. “What? I didn’t even say anything.” 

“Look, make fun of me all you want, but Beth gave me zero choice. Insisted that learning how to waltz is essential to finding a good partner.”

“No, I get it—you got outmuscled by a five-foot-nothing twenty-year-old. Happens to the best of us, man, no shame in admitting you’re out of practice.” 

“You’re an idiot,” Sam says, but he’s smiling as he leans against the railing at Dean’s side, lifting his beer to his mouth. 

“I’m just saying, knowing how to waltz might not be the key to finding the girl of your dreams if you’re dancing like a lopsided giraffe.” Dean yelps when Sam elbows him in the ribs, somehow unerringly hitting the spot where Dean was injured by the Moonlights. “Hey! Easy on the war wounds, man.” 

“Serves you right.” Sam neatly dodges Dean’s attempted retaliatory kick, knocks Dean’s shoulder with his own as he settles back into place against the fence. He stays there, a warm, solid pressure against Dean’s side. Dean rolls his eyes, but chooses not to make a thing out of it. 

It’s not exactly new, Sam invading his space, especially these days. Sam seems to gravitate closer to him when they’re in the same room, as though he prefers to be within arm’s length. It probably doesn’t help that Dean, frightened by the novelty of their recent reunion and the fragility of Sam’s sanity, would let Sam burrow into his ribcage if it meant keeping him safe. 

Sam is looking at him, stupid floppy hair glowing in the fading sunlight. “What?” Dean asks. 

“Nothing.” Sam shakes his head, takes a sip of his beer. “Those ribs were really good, man.” 

Dean snorts. He reaches over to ruffle his brother’s hair, managing to thoroughly mess up the strands of it before Sam swats him away.

Sam

Sam squints at the wall of his and Dean’s bedroom, staring hard at the replicated drawing of a talisman he’d drawn carefully by hand three months ago. It was the symbol that had protected them from the Moonlights, the symbol carved into the amulet that Kelsey had carried outside with her that night.

Sam does this a lot—just stares and stares at the stupid symbol, willing it to make sense of itself. Without a library or internet or lore here, all he can do is hope the meaning of it magically reveals itself to him.

It’s infuriating. He knows that symbol, he’s sure he does. He’s seen it before somewhere. It’s like it’s hovering at the tip of his tongue, and he can’t spit it out.

The door opens, and Sam jumps. Dean lifts an eyebrow at him, kicking the door shut with his foot as he enters the room. His spiky hair is damp from the shower, and he’s dressed in a pair of faded sweatpants and a t-shirt. One of Sam’s t-shirts, damn him. 

“You okay?” Dean asks, crossing to his bed and tossing his towel on top of the covers. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, turning back to the wall. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth. He swears he can still taste the smoky flavor of fresh barbecue from earlier that day, even after brushing his teeth and taking a shower himself. 

Dean sighs heavily as he flops on his bed. “I forgot how exhausting it is,” he mutters, head thumping lightly against the headboard as he shuts his eyes. “Playing normal.” 

“You’re the one who wanted to throw a barbecue,” Sam says, casting him a small, amused smile.

“Yeah, because I wanted ribs. Not because I was desperate to socialize.” Dean rubs his hands over his face, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I have no idea how you did it all those years at Stanford.” 

“What, playing normal?” Sam says. He folds his arms, tapping at his bicep with one finger. “It wasn’t easy. Especially not at first. I barely spoke to anyone—figured any second I’d slip up and say too much, say the wrong thing.”

“Couldn’t have been that bad,” Dean says. “I mean, you met Jess.” 

Sam smiles to himself. Though the wrenching grief has softened over the years, he still feels a light, stinging pang in his ribs as he thinks about her, the soft blond tangle of her hair and sweet, slow press of her lips. “Meeting Jess definitely changed things,” he says. “We were part of the same friend group. I finally felt like I’d been accepted into the fold with them.” 

He pauses, grimaces. He hasn’t thought about his Stanford friends in a long time. It’s not that he doesn’t—didn’t—care about them, but the nights of cheap beer and studying for exams and board games feel so irrelevant in the larger scheme of his life now. Those nights feel like they were attended by another version of him, one made of plastic and puppet strings.

“But I was still pretending, you know?” Sam continues, after a moment. “Even with Jess—I couldn’t tell her the truth. Even without the apocalypse, without the angels and the demons…I don’t know if I would have ever been able to.” 

“You were trying to protect her,” Dean says.

“Didn’t work, did it?” Sam sighs, turns back toward the wall of paper clippings and sticky notes. “I told myself I could have lied to her forever, kept that part of myself hidden, but…I don’t know. I think I was just fooling myself.” He shakes his head. “Besides, what does that say about me, that I was willing to let her believe a lie for so long? Just because I wanted to be normal so bad?”

Moreover, how long was he planning to stay away from Dean? How long was he going to fool himself into thinking he was fine with that distance between them? Sure, things got easier after that first year, after he’d made some friends and felt less desperately, harrowingly alone, but he’d never stopped missing his brother. 

Eventually, he’s sure he would have caved and dialed Dean’s number, just to hear his voice. And he doesn’t think he would have been able to reconcile those two pieces of himself: lawyer and hunter. Normal and freak. He would have had to choose, then, and he thinks it would have destroyed him.

Sam presses his mouth closed before he can accidentally say any of that aloud. He’s talking to himself more than Dean at this point, and Dean doesn’t answer anyway. Sam bites his lower lip, dragging his gaze from note to note, desperate for some revelation to reveal itself to him, something that will make sense of everything that’s happening here.

“Dude,” Dean says finally, voice quiet. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy looking at that stuff. Get some sleep, will you?” 

Sam turns reluctantly away from the wall. Dean is sitting back up in bed, still on top of the covers. His gaze is a little wary, but he doesn’t seem overtly worried. Not the kind of worry where he manhandles Sam into bed, at least. 

Sam really has been doing better. His hallucinations are rare, and he sleeps for at least a few hours every night. But the longer he’s here, the more the mystery of this place starts to nag at him. He feels claustrophobic, stifled. And he just wants to know why —why they’re here, why everyone is here. Why they can’t leave.

Sam steps away from the wall. He sits at the edge of Dean’s bed and rests his elbows on his knees, running his hands over his face. “Isn’t it driving you crazy too?” he mumbles. His voice is unclear, muffled by his hands, but he knows Dean will understand him anyway. “This place, the fact that it exists at all, everything?” 

“Yeah, Sam, of course it is,” Dean says. “We’ll figure it out, man.”

“What if we don’t?” Sam lifts his head, looks over at his brother. Dean is sitting against the headboard, frowning at him, arms folded across his chest. “What if we’re…trapped here? What if we can’t…if we can’t…?”

He lowers his head back into his hands, feeling weirdly dizzy. His chest hurts, as though giant hands are gripping him, squeezing. He hears Dean speaking to him, but the ringing in his ears blocks out most of what he’s saying.

The bed dips, then, and hands land on Sam’s arms, gripping just below his shoulders. The touch makes him jump, like an electric shock going through him, and he jerks his head up. Dean is standing in front of him, face creased with concern. He lifts his hands away the moment Sam jolts, holding them up as though trying to prove he’s unarmed.

“Sammy?” There’s growing panic laced through Dean’s voice. “Hey, talk to me, what’s going on? What is it?” 

Dean’s face swims. Sam draws in a ragged, harsh breath, lungs burning with the effort. He realizes he’s hyperventilating again, so fast and shallow that sparks are tingling at the edges of his vision. 

“Sam.” Dean’s hands return, warm and solid, cupping his neck and pressing to his sternum. “You gotta breathe, man. Take it easy, okay? You’re gonna pass out.”

Sam sways in place, dizzy. Dean shifts forward to keep him from face-planting, and Sam lets his forehead press into his brother’s shoulder, leans there as he struggles to catch his breath. His arms feel numb as he lifts them, gripping the soft fabric of Dean’s shirt until his knuckles start to ache. 

Dean stiffens at the contact, probably surprised—they’re not usually touchy-feely like this with each other—but then slowly he relaxes and lets Sam cling to him, resting his hand on Sam’s head, the other landing gently on his shoulder. 

“Breathe, Sammy.” Sam can feel the comforting rumble of Dean’s voice in his brother’s chest, and it loosens the grip of panic slightly around his ribs. Sam inhales, long and shuddering, and Dean squeezes the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s it. Keeping breathin’. You’re okay, I gotcha.” 

Later, Dean will surely deny that any of this happened, and Sam will be humiliated enough to follow suit. But right now, Sam just tightens his grip, breathing in the smell of his brother’s shampoo and the dollar store detergent on his shirt— it works, don’t it, Sammy? You want to get that frilly stuff that smells like lavender that’s on your dime —and slowly, the familiarity of it relaxes him.

Too soon, Dean gently extricates himself, leaning back. He doesn’t go far, though, just crouches down so he can look Sam in the eye, searching his face for lingering panic. “You good?” he asks.

Sam nods. He feels worn out, arms and legs shaking like the aftereffects of an adrenaline surge. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely.

Dean shakes his head. “Don’t. Stop apologizing, man.” His brow furrows, considering. He drops his hand to Sam’s forearm, squeezing lightly. “Sam. You know we’re gonna get out of here, right?”

Sam nods. “I know,” he whispers.

“No.” Dean grips more tightly. “Listen to me. This place, it’s…it’s like we’re being shielded in here. Like something is keeping us hidden, keeping us safe. Like it’s protecting us. It’s not—” He pauses, jaw working. A pained expression quickly crosses his face. “It’s not a prison, Sammy. We’re okay here. We’re safe.” 

Sam breathes in, registering what Dean is saying, what he’s not saying. His throat tightens a little, pressure behind his eyes. 

Dean lifts his hand, grips at the side of Sam’s neck. “And I’m not leavin’ you alone in here, got that?” he adds. “We’re gonna figure this out together, you and me.” He gives Sam a little shake, as though to impress his point more thoroughly. “Okay?”

It’s this, the reminder that Sam is not alone here, not this time, that settles the agitation in his bones. He exhales, nods. “I know,” he says again, voice hoarse and low. 

Dean nods back at him. He drags his thumb against Sam’s cheekbone, clearing away a couple tears that have escaped, and then lifts away his hand before Sam can fully register it. 

“Go to sleep, all right?” Dean says gruffly, climbing into bed and flicking off the bedside lamp. Sam smiles quickly to himself and fumbles his way into his own bed in the near-darkness. He buries his face in his pillows, inhaling the musty, mothbitten scent of them.

The talisman burns behind his eyelids as he falls asleep.

Chapter Text

Kelsey

Kelsey wakes to sunlight directly in her eyes, and groans aloud as it blinds her. She squints, annoyed, at the window, wondering what possessed her to leave the blinds open overnight. 

A pair of warm arms slip around her waist, and there’s a soft sigh of contentment behind her. “Too early,” a voice mumbles into her hair, and Kelsey’s annoyance vanishes on the spot, eroding into dust.

Right. She actually has a perfectly reasonable excuse for forgetting to close the blinds.

Kelsey rolls over in the circle of Beth’s arms. Beth smiles sleepily at her without opening her eyes, and Kelsey takes the opportunity to just stare and stare, mesmerized by the way the buttery morning light makes Beth’s hair glow, the way the fabric of the bed has imprinted grooves on the soft panes of her skin. Kelsey traces the marks with the tip of her finger, dragging it along the length of Beth’s arm, her shoulder, her cheek.

When she brushes her finger across Beth’s lower lip, she realizes that Beth’s eyes are open, watching her. Kelsey instinctively drops her hand away, but Beth just squirms closer, shifting the position of her head on the pillow until she can press her lips against Kelsey’s.

Her lips are a little chapped—they always are, as Kelsey is coming to learn—and they both have horrendous morning breath, and Kelsey could linger here for absolutely forever . She pulls Beth close, arms wrapped around her slender waist, and Beth sighs a soft, happy sound, tangling their bare legs together.

Kissing Beth was like a revelation, when it first happened, like Kelsey was struck by lightning and remade into someone new. Growing up so sheltered, she’d never kissed anyone before. When Beth first stretched up on her toes and leaned in, the night of the barbecue last week, Kelsey felt dumbstruck, slapped in the face, shaken like a snowglobe. 

Beth’s lips had been dry and warm. They hadn’t been touching anywhere else, but Kelsey felt static shocks of sensation along every minute inch of her skin, the feeling of it cutting like a knife through the haze of alcohol and exhaustion. 

She’d reeled back afterwards, her spine clunking into the doorway of Beth’s house, eyes blown wide. Beth blinked at her, face cast into shadow with the fading sunlight. She’d licked her lips, drawing Kelsey’s gaze. 

Beth kissed her. Beth had kissed her .

“What,” Kelsey croaked. It was all she could manage.

“Sorry.” Beth’s voice was high-pitched, and her face was very red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I must have misunderstood. I thought—” She looked around quickly, as though searching for help, and then turned towards the doorway. “I’ll just—”

Kelsey blocked her way, leaning her arm across the doorway, bracing her hand against the aging wood. Beth froze, but wouldn’t look up at her. Kelsey’s heart was hammering away in her throat like a hummingbird. 

“You didn’t,” Kelsey stammered. “Misunderstand, I mean. I’m, I’m not, um.” 

Beth smiled up at her, lashes casting shadows across her cheeks, surprisingly shy after acting so bold a few moments ago. “Sorry,” she said again, but softer this time, almost coy. “I should have warned you first.”

Kelsey swallowed. She let go of the doorway and straightened, squaring her shoulders as though preparing for battle. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m ready this time.” 

Beth grinned, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she visibly fought back laughter. She’d placed her hands on Kelsey’s shoulders with deliberate slowness, and stretched back up on her toes until their lips met again.

Since then, Kelsey has hardly been able to stop staring —just looking and marveling and memorizing, eyes tracing Beth’s soft features and toothy smile and dotted freckles. She still feels like she’s walking in a dream, no matter how tangible Beth is beneath her hands or her mouth. It feels like a miracle, this beautiful, mesmerizing woman who staggered into Kelsey’s lonely, isolated life.

Beth draws out of the kiss, smiling at Kelsey through drowsy, half-lidded eyes. “I want to stop by the big house, see Jonah before we meet up with the Winchesters,” she says. 

Jonah stayed with RJ last night, though Jonah probably spent the majority of his time with Bonnie. Jonah adores Bonnie—she sneaks him sweet treats and lets him help cook, and Jonah is always asking her to read books to him, claiming she does the best voices.

“Okay,” Kelsey says, but neither of them move. Beth’s fingertips trace the line of Kelsey’s back, a slow up-and-down drift that feels like heaven.

“Are you going to tell me what you’ve got planned?” Beth asks, lifting her eyebrows.

Kelsey hesitates. Dean and Sam are going to teach her how to shoot a gun today, and Kelsey made the last-minute decision to bring Beth along. She didn’t give Beth specifics,worried that the truth of the matter would scare her away. But she’ll feel a lot calmer when they both know how to handle a weapon, and she guesses that Beth will too.

“I hope you haven’t roped me into a foursome,” Beth says, when Kelsey doesn’t answer right away. “Dean and Sam are handsome and all, but I don’t think I could deal with the awkwardness afterwards, you know?”

Kelsey bursts out laughing before she can stop herself. “Unfortunately, no, what I have planned isn’t that fun,” she says. “And besides, I’m not ready to share you with a couple of flannel-wearing frat boys.”

Beth purses her lips invitingly. “Prove it, then,” she says.

And it’s going to make them late, but Kelsey does, happily.

Jonah tries to insist on going with them to meet Sam and Dean, teetering on the edge of a fit until Bonnie deftly distracts him with a lego set she unearthed from the basement. 

“I need someone to help me put this together,” she says, face falling in exaggerated sadness. “Who’s going to help me if you’re not here?” 

Jonah is absorbed in the project less than five minutes later, so focused that he doesn’t even notice Beth and Kelsey making their exit. “Thank you,” Beth whispers to Bonnie on the way out, and Bonnie squeezes her hand in response. 

The Winchester brothers are already waiting for them in the cornfields when Kelsey and Beth arrive. The plants themselves are long-dead, wilted husks the only indication that anything ever grew here in the first place. A few yards in the distance, makeshift targets have been shoved into the dirt, their wooden surfaces gleaming in the morning sunlight. Red circles have been drawn on them in haphazard, uneven lines. 

Dean has his back to them as they approach, his gun trained on the targets. Sam stands next to him, arms folded, and glances over when he notices them in his periphery. He smiles in greeting, but doesn’t call over to them. Instead, he leans down and says in a stage-whisper to his brother, “Dude, did you see that hot girl watching you over there?” 

Dean fires, and the bullet misses the target entirely, instead kicking up dirt and debris when it hits the ground three feet behind the post. “Damn it, Sam,” Dean says, lowering his gun, while his brother snickers. “The hell was that for?” 

Sam just waves at Beth and Kelsey. “Mornin’,” he says.

Dean turns, blinking as he registers the company. “About time,” he grumbles. The tips of his ears are still a little red as he holsters his gun in his waistband. “Didn’t we agree on nine? It’s nearly ten.”

“Sorry,” Kelsey says. “We got…caught up in something.” 

Next to her, Beth’s brow furrows as she realizes what they’re here for. “Are you teaching her how to use a gun ?” she says.

“Both of you,” Sam says. “With those Moonlights out there, you should learn to defend yourselves.”

“But,” Beth stammers. “I’m from a suburb. I—I’ve never even held  a gun!”

“Well, no time like the present,” Dean says. He kneels beside a duffel bag and rummages through it, returning with a shiny silver handgun. He flips it around, gripping the barrel, and holds it out towards her. Beth looks down at it like it’s an animal about to bite her. “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded.”

“Beth,” Kelsey says quietly, when Beth doesn’t move, “what happened with those Moonlights, when Sam was attacked…I kept thinking about what I’d do if that happened to you and Jonah. I…I’d lose my mind.” She swallows. Her throat feels tight. “I don’t want to feel helpless like that. Not if I have a choice to learn how to protect myself.” 

Beth gazes at her, expression pained. “We don’t know something like that will happen again,” she says.

“Exactly,” Kelsey says. “We don’t know. So we gotta be prepared. So Jonah…so he can be safe. So we all can. Right?” 

Beth turns her gaze back to the gun, still held loosely in Dean’s hand. She swallows, shudders, and reaches out to take the weapon. 

As it turns out, Beth takes to shooting pretty well. After some basic instruction from Sam and some corrections from Dean, Beth is hitting the targets with impressive consistency. 

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Kelsey, who, after an hour, can’t hit a single thing. Sam patiently coaches her, encourages her to try again, but Kelsey starts to wonder if it’s a wasted effort. “I think I might be blind,” she says, lowering the handgun in her grip—the third weapon she’s tried to use without success. “What am I doing wrong?” 

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Sam says. “I think the kickback is throwing you off, and you’re having a hard time compensating for it.” 

Kelsey glances over at Beth, who is firing at some nearby targets with Dean standing at her shoulder, giving instruction. For all her hesitancy, Beth’s expression is pure concentration, forehead creased with the strength of her focus. 

“Let’s try something else,” Sam suggests. He returns to the duffel bag nearby, and unearths a much larger weapon—a shotgun. Kelsey eyes it warily as he approaches her. 

“I can’t fire a handgun, and you want me to use that thing?” she says.

“I think you’ll have an easier time with this, actually,” Sam says. “You have a strong frame, and a good core. You’ll expect a bigger kickback from this, and I think you’ll be able to handle it.” 

Kelsey sighs. At this point, she’s willing to try anything, so she hands him the handgun and takes the shotgun. 

Sam shows her how to reload and cock the gun, how to turn the safety on and off, how to hold the gun so it’s braced correctly. Once Kelsey is comfortable with the heft of the weapon against her body and in her hands, Sam faces her toward the targets, and tells her to give it a try.

She fires. And hits the target.

The kickback is a lot more intense than the handgun—but Sam was right. Kelsey expects it, and compensates for it. She jerks back a little, but her feet stay planted on the ground. Beth and Dean look over, attention drawn by the loud noise. Sam, meanwhile, grins at her.

“Nice job!” he says. “What did I tell you?” 

Kelsey lowers the gun. Her face is flushed, but she feels proud of herself. Beth beams, handgun hanging loosely at her side. The expression makes Kelsey feel warm.

“Pretty impressive,” Dean says. A hint of a smirk tugs at his mouth. “Sammy here took hours before he could hit anything with a shotgun, so I’d say you’re a natural by comparison.” 

Sam gives an indignant huff. “Dude, I was eight years old when I first learned to use a shotgun. Give me a break.” 

“That’s no excuse,” Dean says. “I was shooting just fine by the time I was eight.” 

“You were—at eight? ” Beth says, blanching with horror. 

Dean shrugs, like this is old news. “Had to keep ourselves safe somehow,” he says mildly.

Kelsey has become desensitized to the Winchesters’ traumatic backstory, at this point, but she still feels a needle of shock every time they drop a new nugget of information. Eight years old . She was still playing with Barbies when she was that age. 

The sound of a distant church bell shuts off her thoughts, her body going rigid. She whips her head around, staring toward the sound, her stomach dropping into the soles of her shoes.

“Kelsey?” Sam asks, reading the panic on Kelsey’s face. “What’s going on? What does that sound mean?” 

“We need to get back to town,” Kelsey says. “Right now.”

The others begin packing up their supplies without question, but Beth gives Kelsey a frightened look, pressing: “What is it? The bell, what does it mean?” 

Kelsey grits her teeth. She only remembers the bell ringing twice—once when Rodney threw himself to the Moonlights, and once when a car crash brought Sam, Dean, Beth, and Jonah staggering into their lives. 

“It means something bad is happening,” she says. “It means we’re in trouble.”

Chapter Text

Dean

Alan and Larson are standing at the top of the church steps when Dean and the others arrive back in town. Dean has barely given the church a second glance since they arrived—it’s one of the oldest buildings in Jericho and seems held together by asbestos and lead paint, so he doesn’t even like being within a hundred feet of it, really. But apparently, despite its age, the bell tower still works just fine.

There are a handful of other residents gathered in front of the steps: Ron, Olive, and RJ among them. RJ approaches when he sees them, and Beth shoulders her way to the front at once, running up to meet him. “Where’s Jonah?” she asks breathlessly.

“He’s inside the Big House with Bonnie,” RJ says. “Don’t worry, he’s fine.” 

Beth isn’t listening, though, already skirting past him and bolting for the Big House. “Dad,” Kelsey says in a low voice, “what’s going on?”

RJ opens his mouth, but Larson speaks over him from the church steps. “Everyone,” Larson calls. “Listen up. We think there’s been a Moonlight spotted inside the boundary of the town.” 

Dean goes rigid. He mentally calculates the circumference of Jericho, trying to picture every square inch, and panic twinges in his ribs. He tightens his hand around the straps of his duffel bag until his fingers ache.

“Now, calm down,” Larson continues quickly, holding up placating hands. “We don’t know for sure yet, the information is second-hand. But we’re going to send out some folks in groups to check the boundary markers, and set out new talismans if one of them has been compromised.”

“We’ve already organized you into groups,” Alan says. His voice is terse, and his lanky arms are folded tight against his chest. He looks agitated, almost vibrating with it. “We’ll go in teams of two to cover as much of the town as quickly as we can.” 

He starts to call out names, Larson handing out talismans and makeshift weapons—metal pipes, spears fashioned from old wood, a rusted pitchfork—as people are grouped together. “Dean,” Alan says, as Larson approaches him, “You go with RJ to the north part of the city, where Mason road branches off. Sam, you’re with Olive at the west part of town, behind the old schoolyard.” 

Dean snaps his head around, looking over at his brother, an instinctive wave of panic gripping him by the throat. Sam looks at him, eyes pleading: Don’t .

Dean grits his teeth. He takes the talisman without a word, and Sam takes his. As soon as Larson and Alan have moved on, however, Dean turns toward Sam, lowers his voice. “I’m not letting you and Olive go out there by yourselves,” he hisses.

“Dean,” Sam says, “we’ll be fine.” 

“Like you were fine last time?” Dean says.

Sam winces, and Dean almost regrets saying it—almost. But the bone-deep fear of letting Sam out of his sight supercedes the guilt, stiffens his resolve.

“I didn’t know last time,” Sam murmurs. “I know now. If we come across one of those things, I’ll be able to handle it. Besides,” he adds, when Dean opens his mouth to protest again, “I don’t like it either, Dean, but Alan is right. We need to cover as much ground as we can, and both of us can hold our own in a fight—it makes the most sense to split us up.”

Dean grinds his teeth together. “You see any of those things out there,” he says harshly, “even for a second—don’t try and fight them. Just don’t engage. We don’t know everything they’re capable of yet.”

Sam nods, solemn now. “Same goes for you,” he says. He reaches over, claps Dean on the shoulder. Then he’s weaving his way through the crowd to join Olive. 

Dean turns to face RJ. “All right,” he says. “Where to?” 

RJ seems as agitated as Alan was. He walks two steps ahead of Dean, eyes darting from left to right, hand fidgeting around the body of his weapon—a makeshift spear, made of what looks like an old iron gate or something. A kitchen knife has been neatly duct-taped to one end, the metal glinting in the harsh sunlight.

Dean, meanwhile, holds his shotgun aloft with both hands, scanning the trees for movement. So far, however, it’s been quiet. “Who saw the Moonlight on Jericho property?” he asks.

RJ jumps a little, whipping his head around like he’d forgotten Dean was there. Dean has never seen him so on edge—he’d come to think of RJ as a pretty steady guy, generally, if a little brooding sometimes. But RJ looks like he’s on the verge of panic now, his composure held loosely together by string and superglue.

“Alan,” RJ says, after he seems to have gathered himself. He falls into step beside Dean. “He told me, and I told him to ring the bell, get everyone gathered.”

“Is that the best idea?” Dean asks. “Bring everyone outside, when a monster might be wandering around?” 

“The bell just tells of danger,” RJ says. “Residents know to shelter in place if they’re already inside. But if you’re outdoors, or you can spare a hand…”

Yet another thing that Dean and Sam weren’t informed of. Dean bites his tongue before he can say that out loud—right now he and RJ need to work together, and picking a fight isn’t going to benefit either of them. “How often does that happen?” Dean asks. “A Moonlight breaking the boundary, I mean.”

 RJ’s jaw flexes. “Never,” he says. 

Dean swallows, stomach churning unpleasantly. They lapse into silence, completing the walk with only the sound of their footsteps in the background.

They pause at the spot where the road disappears into the tree line, swallowed up by shade and branches. The path has been overgrown, with no one driving in or out of town. But a wooden pole is still securely stuck in the ground at the edge of the tree line, a pendant hanging off of it with a familiar symbol carved into its surface.

“Looks intact to me,” Dean remarks.

RJ nods. He approaches the talisman to inspect it, but doesn’t touch it, as though that alone will disrupt whatever magic is keeping them safe. 

“Do you know what it is?” Dean asks. “That symbol?”

RJ shakes his head. “I’ve looked,” he says quietly. “I’ve never found anything referencing it.”

“How’d you know it would protect Jericho in the first place, then?” Dean asks. 

“Kelsey has a necklace with the symbol on it,” RJ says. “The first time we saw a Moonlight, it came towards her, and then stopped, like it hit a barrier. It was a gamble, at first, but once we realized it was the pendant keeping her safe, we started using it as a protective shield.” 

Dean gazes up at the symbol. It looks vaguely familiar, although that might be wishful thinking, or Sam getting in his head. Sam, who is sure he’s seen the thing before and is driving himself crazy trying to remember. 

“This is the way we drove in, isn’t it?” Dean says, looking down the overgrown road. “Or, would’ve been, if we hadn’t crashed.” 

RJ nods, but he doesn’t answer. He’s still looking up at the pendant hanging from the wooden pole. The thing looks like it was tossed up there by accident; it sways in the light breeze, knocking against the wood. Someone could easily reach up and lift it off without issue. It strikes Dean as a precarious way to store something so vital.

He’s about to note it aloud, even though it doesn’t matter, really, when a gunshot pierces the air nearby, harmonizing with a woman’s high-pitched voice. The sounds in succession send shockwaves of ice through Dean’s limbs. He jerks his head around, staring in the direction of the voice, a rock dropping into the center of his body.

It’s a long, drawn-out scream of agony. It’s coming from the old schoolyard.

Sam

The old elementary school is crumbling into a pile of brick now, but at one point Sam thinks it might have been kind of pretty. It looks like a classic small-town American school, even has one of those school bells perched on top of its roof. It makes Sam feel a little nostalgic, even though he attended so many schools in his childhood that there isn’t a specific one to be nostalgic of . 

Olive, on the other hand, grew up here, so she leads them both confidently through the rusted chain-link fence surrounding the schoolyard, and across the volleyball courts toward the tree line. “Here,” she says as they walk, holding out the talisman towards him, its cord tangled around her fingers. “Hold onto this, okay?”

Sam frowns and hesitates. “Alan gave it to you,” he says. “Maybe you should keep it.” 

Do not lose it , Alan had said, expression deadly serious, as he’d pressed the talisman into Olive’s palm. More serious than Sam had ever seen him before. Hold onto it. Promise me.

“I’m scared I’ll lose it,” Olive says now, still holding it out towards Sam. “I…I tend to lose things. Important things. I dropped the locket Alan got me when we first started dating, let it fall straight into a river, and I don’t think he ever forgave me.” She shrugs. “Besides, we probably won’t need it. I’m convinced Alan is just paranoid. He probably saw a shadow and thought it was a Moonlight.”

Sam keeps hesitating. Olive, impatient, presses the talisman into his chest. “Please,” she says. “I’ll feel better if you take it.”

Sam sighs. He takes the talisman and slips it into his pocket. Olive visibly relaxes, and continues her path across the volleyball court. Sam follows a step behind her.

“Alan and I went to school here together,” Olive says as they walk. “I thought he was the most annoying person I’d ever met.”

Sam laughs. “What changed?” he asks.

“Not much,” Olive says. “Except now I know he’s also secretly a giant sweetheart. Pulls out these romantic gestures out of nowhere. Makes up for it most of the time.” 

“When did you first start dating?” 

“Senior year,” Olive says. She scours the edge of the volleyball court, apparently searching for the talisman. “He asked me to prom. I said no at first—I was an edgy teenager, thought I was above prom—but then all my friends got dates and I thought, fuck it.” She shrugs. “And it was the most fun I’d had in years. So.” 

Sam never went to prom, couldn’t be bothered. But Dean went, sort of. Or, more accurately, he’d crashed his prom—hadn’t bought a ticket, “borrowed” the tux from a classmate, snuck in a flask of whiskey, and left before it was even eleven. He’d strutted home at six the following morning, still a little buzzed, waking Sam up with his heavy footfalls and his loud story about skinnydipping in the quarry, which Sam is still not convinced was true. 

Olive straightens, a look of worry on her face. It makes Sam immediately alert. “What is it?” he asks, holstering his gun as he comes closer.

“The talisman is supposed to be here,” Olive says. “It’s usually hanging from the playground equipment. I thought maybe it fell, but I don’t see it anywhere.”

Sam’s throat tightens, but he just nods and says, attempting to be reassuring, “We’ll find it. Let’s split up, search the blacktop.” 

Sam scans every inch of the ground, staying far from the trees. He passes over the four-square lines and the basketball hoops, growing more and more nervous with each passing second. He’s considering just giving up and putting the talisman up on the playground, but he doesn’t want to waste it if this spot is already protected.

When he finally finds the talisman, at first he doesn’t recognize it. He thought it was a rock or something, the surface flat and gray and unassuming. But when he bends down to get a better look, he recognizes the symbol, and his stomach drops out. The symbol has been cleaved in two, the rock split down the middle into two jagged halves. 

“Shit.” Sam digs in his jacket for the replacement talisman. Sam closes his hand around the smooth stone and looks up, searching, until he finds Olive at the other corner of the playground, still searching the ground for the broken talisman. Sam is relieved for a brief, forceful moment, until he realizes that there’s a pale, malformed figure approaching behind her.

Sam leaps to his feet, opens his mouth to call out. The shout has barely escaped him when the Moonlight is launching itself towards Olive, teeth bared.

Sam isn’t fast enough.

He’s too far away, too slow to get his limbs under his control. His injury has left him less coordinated than before, and he loses precious seconds getting his feet underneath him, loses more seconds when he staggers with the first couple of steps. By the time he’s pushed himself into a run, the Moonlight has Olive pinned to the ground and its claws are ripping into her stomach, tearing into her body. Olive is screaming, thrashing, blood splattering her face and pouring onto the blacktop.

Sam yanks his gun free. He fires at the creature’s face, once, twice. It shrieks and reels back, its claws glistening with crimson. It’s enough for Sam to throw himself in front of Olive, talisman held aloft the way Kelsey held hers back at the Big House, months ago.

The creature snarls, swipes at him, but there’s just a hum of energy, like its claws are connecting with an invisible barrier. It shrieks at him in frustration, swipes one last time, and then whirls and disappears into the line of trees.

Sam drops the talisman in the grass with a muted thump. Ears ringing, blood pounding in his temples, he turns to Olive, kneeling beside her. She’s gasping, wild and frantic, eyes blank and unseeing. Her stomach is a mess of red, the tears so deep that Sam knows, he knows . He’s felt it, every inch of it, every tear and every drip of blood as it leaves his body.

He knows she isn’t going to live. He removes his jacket anyway, numb and robotic. He drapes it over her, takes her hand, squeezes. She whimpers, eyes locking with his for the first time since the attack, terrified, confused, pleading. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers, doesn’t even really realize he’s speaking at first, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”

Olive’s gasps choke off with a gurgling, rattling sound. Her eyes go dim, and her hand goes limp in Sam’s grip.

Sam sits back, shaking so hard he feels like he’s going to fly apart. He can’t look away from her body for a few long moments, the ribbon-like shreds of her skin. Her blood is all over him, painting his hands, his jeans, his shirt. He stares at the stain of it on his palms, the fingers warping and disfiguring in front of his gaze. 

Maybe it’s not real. Her blood, her insides. Maybe it’s his, and the pain just hasn’t hit him yet, waiting for the right moment to pounce. That’s sometimes the worst part, waiting for the pain, knowing it’s coming, his skin tingling with the reminder of it like pins and needles on a numb limb.

“Sam!” 

Sam lifts his eyes. There are figures running toward him. He recognizes them, but he wonders if they’re real, either. He wants to scream at them to stay away, sure that if they get too close they’ll be torn to shreds, just like Olive was. Just like Sam himself eventually will be.

RJ and Dean reach him first. They both balk at the sight of Olive’s body, and RJ sucks in a sharp breath. “God,” he chokes. “God almighty—”

More of them are coming now. Larson and Kelsey, at a distance. Alan’s voice somewhere nearby, too. Dean, meanwhile, turns panicked eyes to Sam and steps around Olive’s lifeless form, kneeling in front of him. He sets his shotgun aside and reaches out, hands at Sam’s shoulders, his chest. “Sam,” Dean is saying urgently. “Sammy, are you hurt? Did it get you? Sam, talk to me, man!” 

Checking for injury. Dean saw the blood on him and thought he’d been torn into, just like Olive. Sam thinks, trying to remember so he can answer. He has been torn into, ripped to shreds, his body remade into a monstrous parody of itself. He looks down at the blood on his palms, confused, wondering why the pain hasn’t hit him yet.

“ Sam!” Dean’s hands are palming at his chest, looking for ravaged skin and blood. His voice has risen in urgency. “Sam, did it hurt you?”

Kelsey lifts her head at Dean’s voice, straightens from where she’d been crouched beside Olive. She approaches over Dean’s shoulder, her steps slow and careful. She pauses a couple of feet away, not stepping in yet.

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t,” he rasps. “I don’t know, I…I don’t feel…” He reaches down, where Dean’s hands are palpating, and fumbles in between the folds of his clothes, trying to feel for himself. There’s no blood, no pain, not yet. Not yet. “I don’t know,” he says again, voice cracked down the middle.

Dean’s expression eases fractionally. He grips Sam’s left hand, and his thumb digs into the center of Sam’s palm. Sam hisses as the pain hits him, but it jolts his mind back into awareness like an electric shock. The pain fades as Dean lets go, and it doesn’t start again.

“Sammy?” Dean says, voice steadier now. “You with me?”

Sam nods jerkily. “I’m okay,” he rasps. “I’m all right.”

Dean lets out a shuddering breath. He palms at Sam’s face, at the sweaty strands of his hair. “Fuck,” he says. “Don’t you—don’t ever—” He gives Sam a little shake. “Fuckin’ pain in my ass,” he finishes weakly.

He’s not making any sense. But Sam’s reality settles back into place, harrowing as that reality is. He realizes he’s clutching at Dean’s arms, hands fisted in his jacket, but he can’t quite seem to let go. He’s afraid if he does, he’ll lose the grip he has on reality again, and blood will come pouring out of the fissures in his psyche.

Sam hears a wrenching sound by Olive’s body, and shifts his gaze, looking over Dean’s shoulder. Sam doesn’t know when Alan arrived, but he’s here now, and he’s kneeling beside Olive’s body in the damp grass. He makes another horrible sound as he clutches her body to his chest, ignoring RJ’s hand on his shoulder and Larson’s quiet words of comfort.

Alan looks at Sam over the top of Olive’s bloodied head, and their eyes lock. The look he gives Sam is pure, unfiltered hatred.

Chapter Text

Sam

“You couldn’t have done anything, man.” 

Sam doesn’t answer. He keeps his head resting in both hands, elbows perched on his knees. The living room of the Big House is quiet, nearly empty, but he can hear voices in the kitchen. Bonnie is making dinner, something with garlic and lots of butter. She feeds people in times of crisis—it’s her way, she says, of healing the hurt.

Sam doesn’t see how food is going to help right now. He can barely stomach the idea of eating anything.

The couch creaks as Dean sits beside him. “Sam,” he says, voice low. “Dude, you can’t beat yourself up over this.” 

Sam lifts his head, lowering his hands into his lap. Even after showering off all the blood, he still feels like he can see it, the stain of it, plastered on his hands. He presses his palms together to try and hide the way his hands are shaking.

“She gave me the talisman, Dean,” Sam says. “I was protected. She wasn’t. I shouldn’t have let her give it to me.” 

“You couldn’t have known it was gonna go down like that.” Dean reaches over when Sam doesn’t respond, grips his arm tight, almost tight enough to hurt. “Hey,” Dean says, sharply. “You are not gonna blame yourself for this, you hear me? You tried to stop it. You did everything you could. I’m not letting you tear yourself up over something you couldn’t control.”

Sam’s mouth twitches at the corner, in spite of himself. “You’re not gonna let me?” he echoes.

“No, dammit, I’m not. I look like I’m lying to you?” 

Sam smells the familiar scent of smoke in the distance, and knows that they’re burning Olive’s body. Alan wanted to bury her properly, but Dean convinced him to cremate. “The last fuckin’ thing we need right now is a ghost haunting Jericho,” he’d muttered, after Alan finally agreed. 

The back door opens abruptly, slamming hard against the wall. Alan appears, stalking inside, trailed closely by Kelsey, Larson, and RJ. “Alan,” Kelsey is saying, reaching for Alan’s arm, but he shakes her off and stomps into the living room. 

Sam stands up from the couch and Dean rises next to him, shoulders already tensed. Sam locks eyes with Alan, chest tightening with the effort of it. “Alan,” he says hoarsely. “Listen, I’m—”

Alan doesn’t let him finish. He grips Sam by the shirt, shoving him hard against the wall beside the couch. Normally, Sam could easily take a guy like him—though Alan is only a few inches shorter than him, he’s not especially muscular—but he’s still shaken from the events earlier and the physical attack catches him off-guard. He winces as his head smacks into the wall, lifts his hands, trying for placating.

“It should have been you ,” Alan spits. His eyes are red-rimmed and his face is pale and sweaty, as though wracked with fever. “You let her die, you fucked it all up—it should have been you who got torn to fucking bits—!” 

“Hey, hey !” Dean shoulders his way in front of Sam, shoves Alan hard until he staggers back. “The hell is wrong with you?” 

“Dean, it’s okay,” Sam tries to say, but Dean stays planted in front of him, and Alan’s voice cuts him off. 

“You know as well as I do that your screwball brother is nothing but a dead fuckin’ weight,” Alan snarls. “He’s a liability, and he just proved it by letting Olive die.”

Dean’s shoulders have gone rigid, hands clenching at his sides. He takes a step toward Alan. “You better shut your damn mouth, Alan,” he says, voice low and dangerous. 

“Why are you wasting your time defending that freak?” Alan is shouting now, his face turning red and splotchy. “You think he deserves to be here while Olive is dead ? He’s nothing but a fucking burden to you, and it’s time you admit it to yourself.” 

Dean moves towards Alan again, a decisive movement this time. Sam catches him by the upper arms, holding him back, while RJ gets in between them, pressing a hand against Alan’s chest. “Alan, enough,” he says, while Dean fights Sam’s grip, a murderous expression twisting his face, his hands balled into fists so tight his knuckles have gone white. “Let’s go take a walk, all right? Come on.” 

RJ leads Alan towards the door. Alan reluctantly lets himself be herded, but he stares daggers at Sam and Dean until the door closes behind him. 

Dean shakes off Sam’s restraining grip once Alan is gone. Sam lets him go, watching as Dean rakes agitated fingers through his hair, avoiding Sam’s eyes. Kelsey and Larson hover at the center of the room, watching Dean like Sam is with wary eyes. Even Bonnie has appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, drawn in by the commotion.

“Sam,” Bonnie says softly, after a few beats of long, strained silence. Sam glances over at her, meeting her steady gaze. “Alan is grieving. You can’t take anything he says to heart right now.”

Sam gives her a weak, dry smile. “It’s okay,” he says. He lifts a shoulder. “Besides, it’s…not like he’s entirely wrong.”

Dean whips his head around at that. He narrows his eyes at Sam. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he says. 

Sam lifts his hands tiredly. “I mean, come on, Dean. We both know I’m not exactly batting a thousand right now. Maybe Alan’s right—if my head wasn’t so screwed up, I could have saved Olive.” 

“Alan is full of shit,” Dean snaps. “He’s mourning his girlfriend, and he’s blaming it on you. I told you, what happened to Olive is not your fault.” 

“But I still failed to save her,” Sam says. He knows he’s raising his voice now, but he can’t stop himself. “And I understand why Alan is angry. I mean, if you’d been the one there with me—if you’d been torn apart, and I wasn’t able to stop it—”

His voice chokes off. He shudders and shakes his head, trying to dislodge the images of Dean’s chest being shredded by hellhounds, Sam’s body pinned to the wall as he’s forced to watch every brutal, agonizing second of it. 

“Sam—” Dean says.

“I can’t let anyone else suffer because of me,” Sam continues, interrupting. “I can’t let you suffer because of me. I’m not—” 

Not worth it , he almost says. But he can’t. He can’t.

“Sam,” Dean says again, through a clenched jaw, “You are not a fucking burden , man.” 

Sam exhales shakily. He lifts his gaze to the ceiling, eyes stinging. The silence is stifling; it rings in his ears, pounding against his eardrums. 

When he can’t stand it anymore, he closes his eyes, turns, and heads upstairs without another word.

Dean

“I checked that talisman,” Kelsey says. “Just yesterday. It was intact.” 

Dean glances over at her. He and Kelsey are finishing up the dishes after dinner—which, as usual, was excellent, but didn’t erase the lingering sour taste in Dean’s mouth after the events of this afternoon. Dean takes the soapy dish that Kelsey hands him, and runs it under cool water before setting it aside to dry.

“The talisman that Olive and Sam found?” Dean asks. “What do you mean, it was intact? The thing was cleaved right through the middle.”

“Not yesterday, it wasn’t,” Kelsey murmurs. She drags her sponge in slow circles on the surface of the plate she’s holding, gaze unfocused, forehead puckered with worry. Though she and Olive weren’t close, Kelsey is clearly feeling the effects of the day as much as everyone else is. Their sense of safety has taken a hit, and their safe haven of Jericho feels tenuous now, like a hairline crack formed in a pane of glass.

“So, what, you think someone broke it?” Dean says.

Kelsey shrugs. She chews on her lip. “I don’t think something like that could have been from an accident,” she says. “Do you?” 

The talisman was made of solid stone—it looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. But Dean can’t understand why anyone would want to destroy it. It would have compromised everyone’s safety, could have destroyed Jericho completely. 

Dean’s stomach roils, turning over like a washing machine. He swallows and sets aside the dripping plate he’s holding, reaching instead for a towel to dry his hands. 

“We don’t know anything for sure,” he says. “It’s not gonna help anyone, pointing fingers. We gotta work together on this if we’re gonna get to the other side.” 

“The other side,” Kelsey echoes, “you mean…like get out of here?” 

There’s a dull spark of hope in her voice—subdued from years of disappointment, but still there. Dean smiles briefly at her. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean get the hell out of this place and get back to real life. You and Beth and Jonah in a little home in the suburbs, with one of those fancy kitchen islands or whatever.” 

Kelsey flushes. She narrows her eyes suspiciously at him, and he just gazes back innocently. Kelsey hasn’t said explicitly that something has been going on between her and Beth, but Dean’s not an idiot. Beth had come hurtling down the stairs mere seconds after Sam vanished up them, and had thrown herself into the circle of Kelsey’s arms at once, babbling about how worried she’d been when she heard what happened. Kelsey, meanwhile, had just smiled and buried her nose in Beth’s hair.

Not exactly subtle. Not that Dean is known for subtlety, himself.

“You really think we’ll be able to escape?” Kelsey says. “Even now?”

“Gotta keep trying, don’t we?” Dean says. He sets the towel on the counter, and hesitates, looking toward the entrance to the living room and at the cot that’s still sitting beside the window. He wonders if it would be easier, just sleeping there for the night, wonders if Sam would even allow him in his space right now. Dean is never sure whether it’s safe to push it, whether his brother will burrow deeper into his own mind as a response.

“Have you talked to him?” Kelsey asks, as though reading his thoughts.

Dean clears his throat. He scratches at the back of his neck. “Figured he needed some space,” he says.

Kelsey is quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, almost a whisper. “He doesn’t talk about it,” she says. “What happened to him. Why he’s…why he’s struggling. But you know about it, right?”

Dean nods grimly. He clenches his hand against the edge of the countertop, resisting the urge to break it apart like a twig. He wonders if he could, if he tried hard enough. “What he went through,” he says, voice hoarse, “it’s…” He swallows, his throat tightening for a brief, humiliating moment. He waits for the tightness to ease before he speaks again. “I feel like I’m barely treading water sometimes. Just making shit up as I go along. But I don’t know how to…do more. I don’t know how to help him.”

The admission feels like whiskey coming back up his throat, raw and corrosive. Kelsey, though, just shakes her head at him. “You’re never going to be able to do everything right,” she says. “All you can do is try. That’s enough.” She smiles at him. “And, not for nothing, but I’ve seen how he is around you—you ground him, even if you don’t realize it. When you’re around, he looks calmer, smiles more. So, I’d say you’re doing something right.” 

Dean looks at her, mildly stunned. He didn’t think she, or anyone else, were analyzing him and Sam that closely. It makes him feel uncomfortably scrutinized for a moment, but he understands—he and Sam are new blood, the most interesting thing to stumble into Jericho for years. It only makes sense that they’d be watched, evaluated, interpreted.

He feels warm, then, a pleasant feeling, even though he’s pretty sure it’s showing on his face. “Thanks,” he says gruffly, looking down at the kitchen towel beneath his hand. Kelsey turns away, back to the rest of the dishes, and he’s grateful for it.

Once the kitchen is clean, Dean heads upstairs. He considers knocking, but after a pause just lets himself into the room he shares with Sam. He pauses in the entryway, hand still braced on the knob, prepared to turn and leave if Sam yells at him or something.

But of course, it’s Sam, so he doesn’t. Sam is sitting in bed, leaning against the headboard, a book perched in his lap that he’s staring at intently. He looks up in surprise when the door opens, and blinks at Dean a couple of times. 

“Hey,” Dean says. “I, uh…there are leftovers from dinner in the fridge, if you’re up to eating something.” 

Sam nods. “Thanks.” He lowers his gaze back to his book.

He’s acting so normal . It’s unnerving. Dean shuts the door, kicks off his shoes. “Well, okay,” he says. “I’m gonna hit the hay, then.” 

Sam hums, still fixated on his book. Dean eyes him warily, and then finally escapes into the bathroom.

When he emerges, dressed in sleep clothes, teeth brushed, Sam has barely moved from his spot. He’s got his thumbnail caught between his teeth, chewing absentmindedly. It’s a bad habit he’s had since they were kids, one that will reappear from time to time whenever Sam is especially stressed. Even from a distance, Dean can see the way he’s bitten his nails to the quick, drawing blood on some of his fingertips where his teeth have tugged instead at skin.

Dean approaches the side of Sam’s bed, lowers himself onto one knee on the mattress. He clasps Sam’s wrist, giving a light tug. “Hey,” he says. “Dude, cut it out. What’s your manicurist gonna say?” 

Sam frowns down at his fingers. “Oh,” he says. He shrugs. “S’fine. Doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s not the point , Sam—” Dean hears himself getting aggravated and drops Sam’s wrist with a sigh. “Look, I—I know what happened with Olive, it did a number on you. I get it. But that doesn’t mean you deserve to…”

He doesn’t finish, nauseated at the thought of it: Sam, thinking he deserves to be in pain. As if Sam hasn’t endured enough pain for ten lifetimes over. 

“Dean, I’m okay.” Sam smiles at him, convincingly even. “Seriously. I’ll be fine.”

If Dean wasn’t Sam’s brother, hadn’t spent his life memorizing the intricate nuances of Sam’s facial expressions, he might have even believed it. Sam is a good actor when he needs to be, voice measured, gaze even, just the right amount of eye contact. But Dean didn’t raise the kid for nothin’, and he sees through that shit in a heartbeat.

“Sammy,” Dean says, lowering his voice, “I meant what I said earlier. You aren’t a burden to me.”

Sam’s expression falters, smile collapsing at the edges. He sighs. “Dean…”

“No. Listen to me. You are my little brother, Sam. Doesn’t matter how bad it gets—PTSD, demon blood, you decide you wanna drive a Toyota Camry for some reason”—that gets a snort of out Sam, which feels like a victory—“that ain’t changing. I’ve been taking care of you my whole life, you think some Hell trauma is gonna be enough to destabilize all that?”

Sam’s smile fades, and he lowers his eyes, looking down at his knees. “Exactly,” he mumbles.

“What?” 

“I said, exactly.” Sam looks up at him, eyes wide and wet, an expression that has Dean hooked like a fish every time whether he likes it or not. “It wasn’t fair to you, Dean, none of it was.” 

“The hell are you talking about, man?” 

“You never had a childhood, because you were too busy taking care of me,” Sam says. The words sound like they pain him to say, coming out coarse and harsh and stilted. “That was never fair to you. And now—when you finally had a chance at normalcy, finally had something of your own—you had to give it all up. Because of me . Because I’m a broken, fucked up mess.”

Dean swallows. He feels sick again, the roasted potatoes from dinner turning over unpleasantly in his gut. He wonders how long Sam thought this about himself, about Dean .

“I’m selfish,” Sam hisses, glaring down at the quilt underneath his legs. “I’m too weak to let you go. And it isn’t fair to you.”

“Hey. Hey .” Dean sits forward, grips Sam’s head with both hands, forces their eyes to lock. “That’s enough, man. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be—give me a little credit, huh?” He lets his hands drop, gripping Sam’s arms instead, but holds Sam’s gaze steadily. “We’re family. We take care of each other, that’s what family does. I’ve been tellin’ you that for years, why don’t you believe me?”

Sam makes a sound in his throat, not quite a sob, but close. He takes a slow breath and lifts his eyes to the ceiling, like he did earlier in the living room. Then, to Dean’s surprise, he gives a breathy, watery laugh. “Man,” Sam says. “We’re both so fucked up, huh?” 

“Damn right we are,” Dean says, and Sam coughs another laugh, gives a shake of his head. Dean tugs lightly at his arm. “Sammy, c’mere.” 

Sam goes easily into the embrace, arms coming up around Dean’s back, Dean wrapping his around Sam’s broad shoulders. Sam gives a shuddering exhale, a sound like relief, and leans his whole weight into Dean’s chest, chin digging into his shoulder. Dean shuts his eyes, grips hard enough at his brother that his knuckles start to ache.

Sam doesn’t let go, even after the requisite number of seconds have passed, so Dean doesn’t either. He can feel Sam shaking minutely, shoulders trembling, knows he’s probably crying. Dean presses his palm against the shaggy strands of Sam’s hair, whispers some comforting nonsense that Sam probably doesn’t even hear. 

Even after Sam’s shaking has subsided, they stay like that, holding onto one another. And Dean thinks that it doesn’t even matter, really, if they escape, if they learn Jericho’s secrets.

They’re together, and they’re alive. Dean has never felt so unburdened in his life.

Chapter Text

Dean

For the rest of the week, things are subdued, quiet, even peaceful. It’s a determined, deliberate kind of peace, like everyone is pointedly setting the events with Olive behind them and laser-focusing instead on normalcy, but it’s pleasant nevertheless.

Sam gets up early every day, barely past sunrise, to go jogging first with Kelsey and then to bury himself in garden work. Dean begins dragging himself out of bed after Sam leaves for his run, so he can make breakfast for everyone in the Big House. It feels like agony, at first, getting up when the sun has barely risen, but the look on Sam’s face when he steps inside the house and smells eggs cooking makes it well worth it. 

They’ve made a habit of eating together in the morning now, everyone in the Big House, before splitting off to their respective activities. The dining table of mismatched chairs isn’t big enough for everyone, so they’ll sprawl in the living room instead, usually: squeezing together on the couch, sitting cross-legged on the floor, perching on empty stools or storage bins. 

Beth often joins them, Jonah bursting into the room ahead of her so he can greet Kelsey and Bonnie, and sometimes Sam and Dean, too. Dean hardly recognizes the shy, withdrawn kid of a few months ago—Jonah has well and truly come out of his shell, demanding whoever is in range to draw or read or play a game with him.

After breakfast, they branch off to do work and chores. Dean goes where he’s needed, but most often he’ll help RJ with building repairs. A handful of Jericho residents have taken it upon themselves to fix up one of the older, broken-down houses near the church. “The Big House has gotten crowded,” RJ said when he pitched the idea originally. “If any more stragglers join us, we’ll need extra space.” 

Beth sometimes joins in the work. Dean was a little skeptical at first—he wasn’t trying to make assumptions, okay, but Beth’s arms are thin like spaghetti and she’s barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, sue him—but she seems to be making a point to prove him wrong. She takes quickly to tasks when they’re given to her, and her work is careful and detailed. Dean learns not to doubt her—if she says she’s going to get something done right, then she will.

Once or twice, Dean even joins in on the garden work, though he hates nearly every second of it. The dirt, the bugs, the unrelenting sun overhead—he finishes work that afternoon feeling gross and sweaty without the accompanying feeling of accomplishment he’s used to. “Man, my fucking back is going to be sore tomorrow,” he groans as he heads inside the Big House, Sam following behind him. “I don’t know how you stand it, hunched over like that all day on your knees. Three hours and I swear I have scoliosis.” 

Sam chuckles at him. “It’s because you’re old now, Dean,” he says. “I’m still young and spry enough that my body can handle it. You’ve clearly passed your prime.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Dean says, but he’s too tired and sore to put all that much heat into it. He flops onto the couch in the living room, leaning his head against the back cushions and letting his legs sprawl out in front of him. “I’m still young and spry enough to kick your ass.” 

Beth shoots him a petulant look from the other side of the room, where she’s sitting on the floor with Jonah and Bonnie, the three of them working on a puzzle. Dean tries to cast her a look of apology, but he can’t feel that bad about swearing in front of her kid. Honestly, with everything happening here in Jericho, it seems like a little bit of swearing should be the least of her worries. 

Sam pats his shoulder as he heads to the kitchen. “Whatever you say, old man,” he says with the utmost condescension, and Dean glares at his retreating back. 

He can almost forgive his brother when Sam returns with two ice-cold beers and hands him one. Almost .

As the sun retreats, the Big House fills up with people. Dean thought that was something he’d mind, all those people in his orbit, but he finds it comforting for some reason. He coaxes the old living room TV on and puts on a movie—their collection isn’t much, but they have some classics from his childhood, so the nostalgia hits—and settles on the couch, and it feels disarmingly normal . 

Sam wanders back into the living room after dinner, another beer in hand, and notes the movie on the screen— E.T. , one of their favorites—and a small, fond smile tugs at his mouth. He shakes his head, but comes over to sit beside Dean on the couch. “That alien creeped me out when we were kids.” 

“Seriously?” Dean says. “Dude, it looks like it’s made of plastic.” 

“Exactly.” Sam kicks his feet up on the coffee table and falls against Dean’s side, head lolling onto his shoulder like it’s something he does every single day. Dean tenses briefly for a second out of surprise, but rolls his eyes and chooses not to say anything. “It’s the uncanny valley, man. Living plastic alien. Creepy.” 

“I thought you loved this movie.” Dean takes a sip of his beer, feels it when Sam shrugs against him.

“I liked it when I got a little older. Iron Giant was my favorite, though.”

“Yeah, I know. You cried the first time you saw it.” 

Sam smacks him lightly in the chest. “Shut up. I did not.” 

Dean bits back a grin and lets it go, but he remembers it vividly. Sam has never exactly been shy with his tears, but he was especially open with them when he was young. He’d been snotting and sobbing when the credits started rolling, even insisted that Dean stay with him until he fell asleep later that night.

Dean feels a pang in his chest, hard and aching. He looks down at his brother, tall and broad now and shaggy-haired and carrying a lifetime of pain, and wishes he could give Sam back a smidgen of that innocence he lost.

He looks away, back at the TV. But he gives into temptation and lets his free hand rest in Sam’s hair, carding lightly through the brown strands. Sam sighs, a contented sound, and his whole body seems to relax, and Dean takes another sip of beer to hide his smile.

It’s not like they’ve never been affectionate with each other, but Sam seems especially determined to shoulder his way into Dean’s personal space lately, like any previous feelings of hesitancy have been scoured away by the past several months. It’s small things, mostly—a squeeze around Dean’s shoulders as he’s doing the dishes, an arm thrown around his neck when Sam laughs at something dumb he said, Sam’s feet plopped in his lap while they’re sitting at the dining room table. 

Instead of teasing Sam about it, like he’s probably supposed to, Dean instead finds himself reciprocating, ruffling Sam’s hair as he passes by, squeezing briefly at the back of Sam’s neck as he heads for bed, leaning his shoulder against Sam’s when they’re standing near one another. It’s starting to feel normal, and it’s nice, and nobody bats an eyelid at it.

Except Kelsey, sometimes, who gives Dean a teasing smirk right now as she enters the living room. Dean just gives her a look, and she lifts her hands, as if to say, hey, I didn’t say anything. She crosses in front of the TV and joins Beth and Jonah on the floor, where they’re still pouring over the puzzle that they’ve barely made progress on.

Sam’s eyes are closed, so Dean is pretty sure he’s asleep. He’s absorbed in the movie anyway, so it doesn’t make a difference to him, until the pressure in his bladder grows too uncomfortable to ignore. He pauses the movie reluctantly, and flicks his brother lightly in the ear. “Hey, Sammy,” he says. “Quit using me for a pillow, dude, I gotta piss.” 

Sam’s forehead puckers as he stirs. His body goes rigid, and Dean knows that expression, knows the tense lines of Sam’s shoulders. He senses what’s about to happen a second before it does.

Sam’s eyes fly open. He lashes out with a hoarse shout and Dean quickly catches both his arms before Sam can give him a black eye. The others look over, startled, but Dean ignores them, keeping his gaze on his brother’s face, searching for eye contact.

“Sammy,” he says, firm, but not shouting. He’s gotten better at this lately, knows what’s going to work best to keep Sam grounded, bring him back to reality. “Sam, look at me. I’ve got you. Just look at me.” 

Sam’s eyes spin wildly, still half caught in his dream, not seeing yet. But Dean knows he hears, knows he’s struggling to resurface. “Dean?” Sam says, but his voice is hoarse and it’s barely a whisper.

“I’m here, Sam. Just look at me, come on.” 

He presses his thumb to the scar on Sam’s palm, but doesn’t dig in, not yet. Sometimes the pain will work to remind Sam of reality, but sometimes it has the opposite effect. Dean waits, until he knows how deep underwater Sam is, until he learns the type of fear he’s struggling with.

This time, Sam’s eyes refocus on their own, finding Dean’s. He blinks, settles, and lets out a slow breath. 

“You good?” Dean asks. He settles a hand on the side of Sam’s neck, squeezes gently. Sam takes another slow breath, nods.

“I’m good,” Sam says. “Yeah. Sorry.” 

Stop apologizing , Dean wants to tell him, but he’s not sure there’s any point. Sam always apologizes, and Dean always tells him to cut that shit out, and neither of them learn their lesson. 

The others are still looking over, watching the interaction with curiosity. The scrutiny prickles Dean’s neck, but he can’t blame them, not really. He turns his focus back to Sam, pats the side of his face a couple of times before he drops his hand. “Go head upstairs, huh?” he says, voice low, hoping the others can’t hear. It’s as much privacy as he can offer, right now. “I’ll be there in a second.” 

Sam nods. He still looks half-asleep as stumbles off the couch and shuffles upstairs. Dean can’t help thinking that he looks really young, in spite of his height and his breadth. It makes that panging feeling return to the center of his chest, that ache that accompanies Sam’s pain, like empathy made physical.

“I have nightmares sometimes,” Jonah pipes up, once Sam is gone. His voice makes Dean jolt a little; he’d almost forgotten the others were still here. “It’s scary, but it helps when mommy gives me a hug. I feel better then.” 

“Good advice, kiddo,” Dean says. “Thanks.” 

Beth squeezes Jonah against her side. “Will he be okay?” she asks. “Sam?” 

“Yeah, he’ll be okay.” Dean rubs a hand through his hair. “He’s been better lately, I think.” He stands. “I’d better head upstairs, call it a night.” 

“Yell if you need anything,” Beth says. “We’ll be here for a little bit longer.”

Dean smiles at her. She says it so easily, with so much sincerity. It makes him think of Bobby, that steady support even when he doesn’t ask for it. 

The thought of Bobby makes the pang return to the center of his chest. Dean has no idea how long they’ve been trapped here. Bobby probably thinks they’re dead by now, and he might never know otherwise. Dean misses him, wonders sometimes if they’ll ever see him again.

Sam is sitting up in bed when Dean arrives upstairs, pinching at the bridge of his nose and rubbing at his temples. Dean silently gets the spare bottle of Ibuprofen from his duffel, shakes two pills out into his palm. He grabs a bottle of water and holds both out to his brother.

Sam eyes the pills hesitantly. Pain meds are a limited resource here and therefore a rare indulgence. 

“Just take ‘em,” Dean says. “You’ve had the same headache all day, man.” 

Sam sighs heavily. He takes the pills and the water, and swallows them both.

Dean unlaces his boots, kicks them off by the door, shrugs out of his flannel. “You feelin’ okay?” he asks.

Sam nods. He rubs at his eyes some more. “Yeah,” he says, voice still a little raspy. “I’m okay. The nightmares just…they put me on my ass, you know.”

Dean does know. He can distract himself all he wants while he’s awake, but there’s no protecting himself from his subconscious, not while he’s asleep and vulnerable. It’s a stark, unpleasant reminder that he cannot protect Sam from everything.

“It wasn’t even hell, what I was dreaming about,” Sam says, voice low. It surprises Dean; they’d settled into silence, and he sort of figured Sam was too drained for conversation. Sam is frowning at the surface of the quilt, as though lost in thought. “It was about the Moonlights.” 

“Olive?” Dean asks, settling at the edge of his bed, hands clasped between his knees.

“Sort of.” Sam looks uncomfortable now. “It was her, and then it was you, and then…I don’t know, your faces kind of melded together.” He shakes his head, looking frustrated. “I just, I keep thinking about Alan. The way he looked at me after.” 

“He just lost his girlfriend, Sam. He was looking for someone to blame, that’s all.”

“I get that,” Sam says. “On a fundamental level. But.” 

He pauses, rubs at his temples some more. Dean waits.

“The way he said it,” Sam says finally. “ It should have been you . It’s like it was more pointed than grief. More deliberate. Like he meant something else.”

Dean tenses, his skin prickling unpleasantly. “Like what?” he says. “You think he’s the one who broke that talisman? He was setting a trap for you? Why? ” 

“I don’t know, Dean.” Sam rubs his jaw with one hand. “I could be making it all up in my head. It’s just a feeling.”

His eyes go unfocused, gazing at the far wall. Staring at the talisman symbol again. Dean leans over and snaps his fingers in front of Sam’s nose, making him flinch. “Hey, come back to me man, where’d you go?” 

Sam swats him away. “Cut it out.” He says. “God, you’re so annoying.” 

As if to prove his point, Dean flicks him in the ear. He leaps up off the bed to dodge when Sam tries to smack him in the back of the head, escaping into the bathroom.

At two in the morning, Dean is still awake, tossing and turning in his bed while Sam snores a few feet away. He finally gives up and climbs out of bed, instead pouring back over the wall of evidence. He finds himself staring at the talisman symbol again, eyes aching. It starts to just look like a bunch of lines after a while, blurring and swimming into a blob of nothing.

It’s then, for whatever reason, that the symbol suddenly makes sense. 

Dean inhales sharply, yanks the post-it from the wall. He glances at his sleeping brother, considers waking him, but decides against it. Instead he tugs on a pair of jeans and boots and heads downstairs as quietly as he can. He’s busy searching the bookshelf beside the back door when a voice says behind him, “You’re up awfully late, son.” 

Dean straightens, whipping his head around. RJ has joined him in the living room. The man looks exhausted, his eyes shadowed and his clothes rumpled. 

“Couldn’t sleep.” Dean bends to look at the bottom shelf and finally finds the title he’s been looking for. “I think I figured out what the talisman symbol is.” 

“Oh?” 

“I think it’s Sumerian.” Dean pulls the book free and opens it in one hand, flipping through the pages with the other. It’s a thick book on mythology—one he’s definitely seen Sam flipping through at one point, years ago. “It’s the symbol of an ancient Mesopotamian goddess. I’ve only glanced at the thing before, so I didn’t recognize it at first.” 

He flips to the page he’s looking for: an entry about the Cult of Ishtar. And right there at the top of the page is a picture of the talisman symbol: a ring post made of reed.

“Here,” Dean says, triumphant, pressing the sticky note onto the page. Sure enough, the symbols match. “It’s a symbol for Inanna, an ancient Mesopotamian goddess. The symbol was placed at the entrance to her temples—it’s supposed to designate the line between the profane and the sacred realms , whatever that means.” 

“Dean…” 

“So then, why is the symbol protecting us from those things?” Dean mutters to himself, looking up from the book and out the window. 

“Dean.” RJ steps in closer. Dean blinks up at him, confused by the serious, intense look on RJ’s face. “Listen, I’m…I’m sorry.” 

“Sorry for what?” Dean says blankly. “RJ, this might be the information we need to figure out how to get out of here.” 

“I know how we’re going to get out of here,” RJ says softly. “And it isn’t with that book.” 

Dean opens his mouth to ask what the hell RJ is talking about, but he never gets the chance. He catches the footsteps behind him just a second too late, his instincts dulled by weeks of domesticity. As he turns, something solid connects, hard, with his temple. Pain crashes through his head, bright lights exploding across his eyes. 

The last thing he hears as he collapses to the floor is the mythology book thumping against the frayed carpet.

Chapter Text

Sam

Sam feels something is wrong before he even opens his eyes.

The first rays of early morning sunshine are slanting across his face as he stirs; it’s early, can’t be later than five, but he feels relieved anyways. He slept without nightmares for a solid number of hours, and that doesn’t happen often. 

The relief doesn’t last long. He sits up in bed and sees that Dean’s bed is empty, covers rumpled. Sam tries to chalk the pinprick of anxiety he feels up to trauma—he’s come to expect Dean’s presence nearby, so he’s bound to feel a little thrown off when Dean’s not there.

Shaking off the nervous feeling, Sam dresses and heads downstairs, thinking he’ll find Dean in the kitchen, making breakfast. But the whole first floor is empty, and so is the back yard. The prickling fear in Sam’s stomach swells, expanding to fill his lungs. 

He heads back upstairs, checks the other rooms, re-checks his and Dean’s room, just to make sure. The only thing he discovers is that the yellow sticky note on their wall, the one with the talisman symbol crudely drawn on it, is missing.

“Maybe he figured it out,” Sam mutters to himself. “Shit, Dean, why didn’t you wake me up?” 

Sam leaves the Big House, stops at Ron’s mechanic shop, finds it empty. He goes to Beth’s house, knocks, waits with restless, impatient energy, already sweating from the rising heat and the mad dash across Jericho. When Beth opens the door, it feels like he’s been waiting for thirty minutes.

“Sam?” Beth’s hair is tangled and she’s still dressed in sleep clothes, a rumpled t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts. “What’s up? Everything okay?” 

Kelsey shuffles into view behind her, dressed similarly, a scowl on her face. “Dude,” she says. “It’s like six-thirty. What’s the deal?” 

“Have either of you seen Dean?” Sam asks. He wants the words to come out calmly, but urgency makes his voice shake. Kelsey’s scowl fades when she hears it, and she steps up to Beth’s side, leaning against the doorway while the two of them exchange looks.

“No, not since last night,” Beth says. “He’s not in the Big House?”

Sam shakes his head. “I think he might have figured out where the symbol is from,” he says. “The one on the talisman. Maybe he went to find out for sure. But I don’t know where.” 

Kelsey and Beth look at each other again, exchanging expressions of worry now. “We’ll get dressed,” Beth says, and Sam is shocked at the relief that floods through him. “Give us five minutes.” 

Bonnie cooks breakfast by herself this morning, but Sam can’t eat. Six turns to seven, and seven turns to eight, and still Dean doesn’t appear. Sam’s hands start shaking, and won’t stop.

“He wouldn’t have just left,” Sam says, pacing the living room, too restless to sit down. “Not without saying something, or leaving a note. He wouldn’t do that.” 

“You said he took that sticky note from your bedroom,” Kelsey says. “Did he take anything else?” 

Sam shakes his head. He catches sight of a thick hardcover book, half-hidden under the bookshelf beside the door, and bends to pick it up, desperate to do something with his hands. He slides it into the empty space on the bottom shelf, and then pauses before standing back up. He slides the book free again and frowns down at the cover.

It’s a book on ancient Mesopotamian mythology. As Sam stares at it, he swears he can feel the click in his head as he realizes, like a lever slotting into place. He flips open the book to a crumpled page somewhere in the middle, and his heart flies into his throat. The yellow sticky note is resting on the page, secured right next to its matching symbol.

“He did,” Sam breathes. “He did figure it out.” 

Sam pieces it together over the next several hours, as best he can.

“Inanna, she was sort of a… a goddess in Sumer,” he explains to Kelsey, the two of them gathered together at the dining room table. “She and her husband, Dumuzid, were worshipped in Mesopotamia. Called it the Cult of Ishtar.” 

“Ishtar?” Kelsey says.

“It was another name for Inanna,” Sam says distractedly. He leafs through the mythology book, chewing at the ragged bits of his fingernails. He tastes iron, but he can’t make himself stop. “There’s this text, Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld . She dies, but she crawls out of the underworld. These…demons, I guess, they’re called galla…they come after her, try to drag her back. She convinces them to take her husband, Dumuzid, instead.” 

“Harsh,” Kelsey says.

“The demons demanded someone take her place, I guess,” Sam says. “And Dumuzid, he wasn’t mourning her. He’d moved on too quickly. So the demons agreed he could take her place.” He rubs his chin, looking out the window at the line of trees. “I think…the Moonlights, maybe they’re doing the same thing.” 

“Looking for someone to drag down into the underworld?” Kelsey says. “Why?” 

“To replace someone they lost, I guess?” Sam says. 

“Who?” 

“I don’t know.” Sam shakes his head, frustrated. “And I don’t know why they haven’t stopped, after Olive was killed. Maybe she wasn’t an acceptable sacrifice? I don’t know.” 

He chews harder on his nails, winces as he tears at a bit of skin with his teeth. Kelsey gazes across the table at him, lower lip caught between her teeth. 

“So those talismans,” Kelsey says. “The symbols on them, they’re keeping the Moonlights—the, uh, the galla out of Jericho?”

Sam nods. “Seems like it. I guess, since the town is marked as sacred ground, Inanna’s symbol is protecting us.”

“But it’s also keeping us trapped,” Kelsey mutters.

“Yeah.” Sam gives a bitter laugh. “There’s always a catch.” He leans back in his chair, rakes agitated fingers through his hair. “What I want to know is, if Dean figured all this out already, where the hell did he go?” 

“Maybe he wanted to be sure?” Kelsey says.

Sam shakes his head. “No. He would have said something to me first. He would have.” He taps his finger on the aged wood of the table. “Maybe someone else found out. Someone who doesn’t want us to know what’s going on—someone who has something to lose if the truth gets out.”

Kelsey stares at him intensely, a desperate sheen in her gaze. Who? her eyes say.

Before she can form the question with her voice, the back door opens, and Sam looks over, expecting Beth. She left to take care of Jonah for the time being, but she promised she’d be back to help later. 

It’s not Beth, though. It’s RJ. 

“Sam,” RJ says. “Can I speak with you for a moment?” 

Dean

There’s an ice pick in Dean’s head, slowly chipping away at the gray matter of his brain. He groans as he cracks his eyes open, the yellowy overhead light making his eyes ache. “Oh, what the hell?” he grumbles, shifting awkwardly on a hard surface.

It’s a chair, he realizes, after a pause. He’s sitting in a chair, ankles tied securely to the legs of it, hands bound behind his back. He tugs on the binds on instinct, and the chair rattles underneath him. He sighs in aggravation. This is the last goddamn thing he needs right now.

“You awake?” a man’s voice says.

Dean raises his head, squinting. He’s in what looks like an old cellar, though it’s mostly empty now aside from some musty barrels. Standing in front of him, illuminated by the single glowing bulb of light overhead, is Alan, arms folded and expression flat.

“Damn it,” Dean groans. He tries to sit up straighter, his head throbbing with the effort. “What the hell, Alan?” 

“Try not to move,” Alan says. “RJ’s just gone to get your brother. He shouldn’t be long.” 

Dean goes still, narrowing his eyes up at Alan’s scruffy face. “If you touch my brother,” he says, “I swear to god—”

“We’re not gonna hurt him,” Alan says, rolling his eyes. 

Dean bares his teeth, yanking at the ropes around his wrists. The ice pick in his head takes up residence behind his left eye, stabbing away. “What the fuck is going on?” he snaps. “What do you want? ” 

“I want this all to be over ,” Alan says. “I want to finally get the hell out of here.” His gaze slides toward the cellar door, fingertips tapping against his arm. “It was supposed to be over days ago. Olive wasn’t supposed to…she wasn’t…”

A light shudder seems to run through Alan’s body. He swallows, and his expression flattens out again. 

“Olive was supposed to have the talisman,” Alan mutters. “Not Sam. Your brother fucked the whole thing up.” 

Dean stares, horrified, eyes wide. “You planned all of that,” he says. “The broken talisman, the Moonlight—you sent them there to die. You sent Sam there to die.” He yanks again at the ropes, vision going red for a split second. “ Why? ” Alan doesn’t answer, and Dean yanks harder, hard enough that his wrists start to burn. “Hey, talk to me!” 

The cellar door opens, and Dean snaps his mouth closed. Alan retreats back to Dean’s side, and for the first time Dean sees the gun clasped in Alan’s hand—Dean’s gun. 

Sam comes slouching through the door first, head bent to avoid knocking it against the ceiling. RJ follows close behind him, shutting the cellar door once they’re both inside. Sam’s eyes widen briefly as he catches sight of Dean, but a moment later he carefully sweeps his expression blank. He looks at the gun in Alan’s hand and at Alan himself, and then at RJ. 

“What’s going on here, RJ?” Sam says. “What did you do to my brother?” 

“I’m sorry, Sam,” RJ says, and as pissed off as Dean is, he has to admit that RJ really does seem apologetic. His shoulders are hunched, face lined and gray, like he’s aged swiftly over the past several days. “I didn’t want to have to finish it this way, but…I’m out of options. Really, I’m sorry.” 

Sam furrows his brow. He looks back over at Dean again, locking their eyes. Are you okay? Sam’s gaze says. Dean gives a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod, one that only Sam should be able to notice. With his gaze, Dean says, Don’t give them whatever it is they want, Sammy.

Sam breaks the eye contact, looks back over at RJ. “Just tell me what’s going on, RJ,” he says.

“What’s going on, is that you’re going to give yourself to those ghouls out there,” Alan says, patience apparently waning as he points toward the door. “And in return, we won’t kill your brother.” 

He lifts the gun to make his point, holding the barrel at Dean’s head. Dean tenses, but doesn’t look away from Sam. Sam regards the weapon calmly, face still carefully schooled. Dean feels a quick rush of pride.

“Why would I throw myself to the ghouls?” Sam says.

“It has to be you,” RJ says heavily.

Sam shakes his head. “Why?” 

“Because she chose you.” RJ looks at the ground, eyes haunted. “Inanna.” 

Sam frowns. He glances quickly at Alan and the gun again, a brief, automatic flick of the eyes. “That’s her symbol, on the talisman,” Sam says. “It keeps those ghouls out.”

“Yes,” RJ says. “But it also keeps us in —until I give her what she thinks she’s owed.” At Sam’s confused expression, RJ sighs. “My wife was very sick when we first married. Cancer. I prayed to every god I could pronounce the name of. Inanna was the only one who answered.” His eyes are already filling with tears. “She promised to heal my wife, in exchange for the soul of my first born.”

Sam’s throat bobs as he swallows. “Kelsey.”

RJ nods. “I never planned to have children,” he says. “So that I would never need to sacrifice one of them. But my wife, she got pregnant anyway.” He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to hold in his tears, but they track down his face anyway, making slow lines along his chin. “My wife died in childbirth with Kelsey. I thought that would be enough for Inanna—my wife’s soul. But she still came for Kelsey.”

“So that’s why…the talismans,” Sam says. “To keep Kelsey safe.” 

RJ nods jerkily. “She is all I have left,” he chokes. “She is my daughter, my world. I…I cannot give her to Inanna. I won’t.” 

“RJ, Inanna won’t stop coming for her, no matter how many other people you toss her,” Dean says, voice low. “No one else has to die, we can figure something else out.” 

“She will stop,” RJ says softly. “If I give her Sam.” 

Sam tenses, just a little. “How do you know?” 

“She came to me,” RJ whispers. “She spoke. I hoped—maybe someone new to Jericho might be an acceptable replacement. And then you two…” He looks at Sam and then at Dean. “She says that she’ll accept you in Kelsey’s place. And we’ll finally be free.” 

“So then take me,” Dean snaps. “Fucking throw me to those demons, but leave Sam out of it.”

Sam glares at him, a quick shut the hell up scowl. Dean feels the muzzle of the gun press against his temple, and shuts up. Reluctantly.

“Sam is the better choice,” Alan says. “RJ and I talked about it. Sam’s already fragile, already damaged. Less of a loss.” 

Dean grinds his teeth together. He shoots Alan a murderous look, and Alan just smirks back at him.

“Yeah, see, that’s why it’s gotta be one of you,” he says. “You and Sam have the weirdest goddamn relationship I’ve ever seen in my life. The way you’re wrapped around each other—it’s not normal. But it means that the grief Sam’s death will leave behind, it’ll be enough for Inanna to give up on Kelsey.”

Sam’s hands clench into fists at his sides, knuckles turning white. His expression stays schooled, except for a quick twitch in his jaw. Dean, meanwhile, doesn’t give a shit about staying calm. “You’re not feeding my fucking brother to a bunch of monsters,” he bites, rattling the chair as he struggles pointlessly.

“Even if it’ll save everyone else?” Alan says. “Even if it will let us all escape?” 

Dean opens his mouth to respond, but Sam’s voice cuts him off. “Will it?” he says softly. He’s looking at RJ. “Will it let everyone escape?”

“Yes,” RJ responds. “If Inanna keeps her word…we’ll finally be able to leave.” 

Oh, no. Absolutely not. Dean knows that look on his brother’s face. “ Sam ,” he growls.

“What if I refuse?” Sam says. “What if I won’t do it?” 

“Then we’ll kill your brother, dumbass,” Alan says, knocking the barrel of his gun against Dean’s head. Dean flinches, he can’t help it. “And I think we both know you’re not going to let that happen.”

“They’re bluffing, Sam,” Dean says through his teeth. 

“It’s okay, Dean.” Sam won’t look at him, though. He keeps his gaze fixed on RJ. “If I agree to this,” he says, “you have to promise you’ll tell Kelsey the truth.” 

“Sam, no!” Dean yells. 

“She will never forgive me for it,” RJ says hoarsely.

“You have to tell her anyway,” Sam says. “She deserves to know. Promise me, RJ.” 

RJ’s eyes water, but slowly, he nods. “All right,” he says. “I promise.” 

Sam sighs. His shoulders slump and he looks exhausted, resigned, weighed down. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.” 

“Don’t you fucking dare, Sam.” Dean’s wrists burn ferociously as he strains at the ropes tying him in place. “I swear to god, don’t you dare do this. Sam, don’t you do this!” 

The blunt, metallic edge of Alan’s gun—Dean’s gun—slams into his head, casting tendrils of pain through his temples. He blinks rapidly, clinging to consciousness. “Alan!” RJ says sharply.

Alan gasps beside him. By the time Dean blinks away the spots in front of his eyes, Sam has disarmed Alan and backed him against the wall of the shed, gun pointed at Alan’s sternum. Alan’s nose is bleeding and he has both hands raised, eyes locked on the barrel of the weapon. For the first time, Sam’s expression is set with fury. 

“Stay the hell away from my brother,” Sam says, voice icy. “I agreed to be your scapegoat. He has nothing to do with it anymore. Got it?”

Alan swallows. He nods.

Cautiously, RJ approaches Sam’s shoulder. “Sam…”

Sam just lowers the gun, flicks the safety back on. He tosses it aside. Dean watches the gun fall into a pile of crusted burlap sacks, blank with disbelief.

“All right,” Sam says. “I gave you my word. Let’s go.” 

RJ relaxes with apparent relief. “Sam, I…you don’t have to do this,” he says, but it sounds like it pains him to say it.

“We’re not going to get out of here if I don’t,” Sam says. “Kelsey and the others, they deserve a real chance at life.”

RJ’s chest heaves with what sounds like a choked-off sob. “Sam…you are saving us all. You’re saving my daughter. I…thank you.” 

“Sammy, please,” Dean rasps, pain stealing his voice as his head throbs. “ Sam .” 

Sam approaches, kneeling in front of him. His expression is apologetic, eyes watery. Dean can’t stand it, can barely look at him, can’t look away. 

“Dean,” Sam whispers. “I’m not going to let you and everyone else rot in here. Not if I can get you out.” 

“Then let me do it,” Dean hisses back. “Let me be the fucking martyr. Inanna only needs one of us, so let me throw myself to the ghouls, huh?”

Sam shakes his head. “Alan was right,” he says. “All this hell in my mind…I’m damaged. You have a chance at normal, without me. If you were gone, I…” Sam’s throat jumps. He trails off.

You think I’ll be fucking okay once you’re gone? Dean wants to scream. You think I want any kind of normal without you? You think I’d rather be free without you than rot in here with you? 

But that last thought is horridly, unabashedly selfish, and he can’t voice it aloud. “Sammy,” he croaks instead. “I can’t let you. I won’t.”

Sam’s lower lip trembles. He reaches out, rests a hand on Dean’s knee, gripping. His eyes slide shut and for a moment he just stays there, both of them silent. 

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam whispers. He lifts his hand, rests it briefly in Dean’s hair, and then stands. He follows RJ out the door, Alan at his heels. Dean feels like his throat has been tied by a length of ribbon, can’t even find the air to call out after them as they disappear.

He’s hobbled half of the way toward the far left corner of the cellar, his chair nearly toppling over six times, when the cellar door opens again. 

He whips his eyes away from the promising-looking nail sticking out of the wall—a little high for him to use it to cut off the ropes around his wrists, but he was going to try anyway, damn it—and squints as the late afternoon sunlight pours in, blinding him. For a second he hopes it will be Sam, having changed his mind or maybe killed both RJ and Alan, that would be awfully nice, but it’s a short-lived hope. The figure descending the stairs isn’t nearly as tall or broad.

But it’s Kelsey, and the sight of her makes Dean’s hands tingle with relief nevertheless. “Kelsey,” Dean says at once, “hey, gimme a hand here—”

He doesn’t need to ask; Kelsey is already crossing the cellar towards him, a pocket knife in one hand, mouth pressed into a tight line. She bends down behind him and starts sawing at the ropes. “They’re headed to the basketball court, where Olive died,” she says as she works. “We don’t have a lot of time to stop them.”

Dean blinks at her as she circles around to the front of the chair. The ropes fall behind him, and he brings his arms around, rubbing at his sore wrists. “You know what they’re planning?” he says.

Kelsey nods shortly. Now that he gets a good look at her face, Dean can see the way her eyes are rimmed with red, the splotchy flush on her cheeks, like she’s been crying. 

“I heard,” she says. “Everything.” She gets one ankle freed, and moves onto the other. “There’s a spot in the floorboards, where you can hear into the cellar if you concentrate.” 

Dean tightens his jaw. “Kelsey,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the ropes she’s cutting through. “I always knew that there was something he was hiding from me,” she says. “I’m not letting him sacrifice someone else for me. I can’t live with that.”

As soon as the final bindings are gone, Dean jumps to his feet, snatching his gun from the pile of burlap sacks. “Kelsey,” he says, facing her, “I don’t want to hurt your dad. But I can’t let him kill Sam.”

“I know.” Kelsey swallows. She straightens, and seems to steel herself. “It’s my responsibility to put a stop to this. It’s me Inanna wants, it’s because of me that we’re all trapped here.”

“You don’t have to let her take you. We’ll figure something else out.” 

Kelsey’s lips press back into a hard line, but she doesn’t respond. She turns toward the cellar door. “Come on, we have to hurry.” 

Chapter Text

Sam

The line of darkened trees should be more threatening than ever, considering that Sam is about to walk straight into them and, by extension, into the arms of the monsters lurking inside. But instead, he feels calm, detached almost, like he’s already floating somewhere above Jericho itself.

It probably has something to do with knowing Dean is safe, knowing he’ll be free after Sam has done what he’s about to do. Dean will probably hate him, once all the dust is settled, but that’s okay. It’s worth it, Sam knows it is, even if it feels like barbed wire inside of him.

“Sam,” RJ says quietly. “Are you ready?” 

Sam looks behind himself, at RJ and Alan, who are hovering by the fence, their bodies just barely illuminated by the setting sun. Sam’s feet are just toeing the line beyond the safety of the talisman, waiting for sunset to step across. The air feels cool, soothing, and he soaks the feeling of it into his skin.

“I’m ready,” Sam says. “Now?”

RJ doesn’t answer right away. He swallows, licks his lips. “Sam,” he says, “I…thank you.”

Sam just turns back towards the trees. He doesn’t want RJ’s thanks, doesn’t want anyone’s thanks. After all, he’s not really doing anything except walking toward his death, and he’s done that before. It feels simple, almost like it shouldn’t be this easy. He shouldn’t be allowed to just give up like this.

He steps forward, past the line of safety.

There are a few moments, once he’s standing just beyond the tree line, well out of the boundary of Jericho, that the forest is perfectly still, and he wonders if the ghouls have stopped coming for them. Maybe Olive’s death was an acceptable sacrifice, and Sam is doing this for nothing.

But there’s a rustling sound, and a cool breeze makes Sam shiver, and he sees the first Moonlight—the galla—emerge from the cover of branches. 

He forces himself to stay still as it creeps towards him, but the sight of it makes his hair stand on end, the reality of what’s about to happen digging its claws into him. The galla looks more grotesque than he remembers, its face mottled and deformed, its jaws hanging incorrectly so its sharp teeth jut, uneven, out of its gums. 

Olive’s scream of pain rattles in Sam’s head. He clenches his hands, roots his feet stubbornly in place. The galla is only a few feet away now, looking up at him with hungry black eyes. Sam can see more of them, beyond the line of trees, emerging slowly from the shadows. He can already feel their claws catching on his chest, tearing him open.

As he closes his eyes, waiting for the first slash, he’s just grateful that it’s him here instead of Dean.

When a gunshot rings out, Sam jolts, eyes flying back open. The galla in front of him jerks backwards with a screech, falling in a pile of deformed limbs. Sam whips his head around, thinking at first that RJ shot the demon, but RJ is looking around too, just as bewildered.

“ Sam!”

Dean and Kelsey are running full-tilt towards them across the grass. Sam’s eyes widen.

“ No!” Alan roars, lurching wildly at the two of them, but Dean just stops mid-sprint, levels his weapon at Alan’s leg, and fires.

It’s a perfect, precise shot. Alan goes down with a howl of pain, blood seeping through the leg of his jeans. It’s not enough to do serious damage, or to sever anything lethal, but it’s effective nevertheless. “Get the talisman,” Dean says to Kelsey, who nods and races to grab it from its place on the fence. Dean, meanwhile, runs toward Sam.

“Dean, what the hell are you doing here?” Sam says. The galla are already advancing again, spitting and hissing, even the one Dean shot. “Get back, get behind the talisman, you’ll be killed!”

“Not unless you’re goin’ back with me.” Dean plants himself at Sam’s shoulder, gun trained on the forest. “I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself, man.”

“You can’t stop me, Dean!”

“Yeah?” Dean sets his jaw. “Fucking watch me.”

Sam gets in front of him, ignoring the gun as it knocks into collarbone. He shoves hard at Dean’s chest, surprising him into a few stumbling steps backward. “Dean, get back, will you? Go, get behind the fence!” 

“ No!” Dean seizes Sam’s shirt collar with his free hand, eyes blazing. “Sam, if you go down, then I’m comin’ with you, got that?” 

“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard! Why should we both die?” 

“Well, why should you die?” Dean shakes him. “You think you deserve this? You think you’re too damaged, too broken, too traumatized? It’s bullshit, Sam, all of it, and I won’t let you do this to yourself.” 

“You have to. I  have to. You deserve to get out of here, you deserve a chance to live your life, just listen—”

“No, you listen.” Dean drops his gun entirely, and puts his back to the forest. He grips his brother’s shirt with both hands and gives him a shove, backing him a few staggering steps toward the hill. “Sam, when your soul was shoved back in your body, I knew it was a bad idea. I knew all those years in Hell had torn you up. But I did it anyway.” 

“To save me,” Sam says.

“Yeah, to save you,” Dean says, “but also, Sam, because I just—I wanted you back. I wanted you here . PTSD and all. You wanna talk about selfish? Putting your soul back, keeping you here, alive— that was fucking selfish of me.” 

Sam searches his face. He feels his mouth hanging open slightly, but he can’t school his expression. He isn’t fighting back now, can’t find the willpower. 

“You have no idea what it was like, that year you were gone,” Dean continues, voice growing hoarse but the words coming out fast. Like they hurt him to say but won’t stop, a bleeding wound that won’t clot. “Sammy, the grief was fucking eating me alive. I was barely living, barely hanging on day to day.” He gives Sam a disbelieving shake of his head. “Having you back is a goddamn miracle, and you wanna look me in the eye and tell me that you’re a burden to me?” 

Sam chokes back a sob. His resolve crumbles, just like that, like it was never there to begin with. Dean must see it in the way Sam’s jaw untightens, the way his shoulders slump, because a flicker of hope lights up his gaze. He loosens his grip on Sam’s shirt, palm pressing instead to his chest.

“I don’t care how messed up you are,” Dean says. He gives Sam’s chest a thump. “I don’t care if it takes a hundred years for you to feel like yourself again. You’re my little brother, and I’m not giving up on you. Not ever, you hear me?” 

Sam swallows noisily, lifting his gaze to the sky as he struggles to get a handle on his emotions. A voice sneers at him, snake-like, tells him Dean is lying, the words like hot, acrid breath on the back of his neck. The voice sounds a lot like Lucifer’s, but if he thinks about it, that voice was there long before the Cage. It’s maybe always been there, telling him in ugly, oily whispers that Sam is a burden, filthy and tainted and undeserving of love.

Sam is tired of listening to it. He wants to believe his brother. He wants to share a six-pack next to a bonfire at midnight with his brother and argue about radio stations and drive for twelve hours without stopping and eat too much barbecue at the best restaurant he’ll never remember the name of and stare up at the stars in the middle of nowhere until he falls asleep. 

He wants to live. And he wants to live with Dean.

He takes a long, shuddering breath, feeling tears track down the edges of his jaw and drip into his hair. When he finally lowers his gaze back to Dean’s, he knows his eyes are red and his face is splotchy, but he feels calmer, steadier. 

Dean gives him a questioning look. Sam sniffs, nods. “Okay,” he says, voice raw and thick. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dean smiles at him. He pats Sam’s chest once, hands shaking minutely. With relief, Sam thinks.

Kelsey shouts from back at the fence, and the two of them look over. Kelsey has the talisman gripped in her hand, but RJ has her by the wrist, grip tight. “Dad, let go!” Kelsey says, trying to yank free.

“Kelsey, I can’t,” RJ says desperately. “Please—”

Dean gives Sam a light shove. “Get back, c’mon,” he says. He retrieves his gun, eyes on the approaching galla. “Behind the fence, hurry.” 

They turn to run back up the hill, but the galla have moved, surrounding them on all sides. They aren’t attacking, yet, just eyeing hungrily, as though savoring the moment before the kill. Dean’s shoulder presses against his, gun raised, the two of them facing in opposite directions.

“Fuck,” Sam breathes. “Dean, this is bad. This is really bad.”

“Yeah, I’m not thrilled about the situation either.” Dean readjusts his grip on his gun. “Bullets won’t kill ‘em, but it’ll slow ‘em down. We just gotta get an opening.”

Easier said than done. Sam presses harder against his brother, Dean’s shoulderblade digging into his arm. He swears he can feel the way Dean’s pulse is racing, matching his own. 

“Dad, let me go!” Kelsey screams.

“Kelsey—”

Kelsey drops the talisman. She yanks hard at her wrist, twisting violently out of RJ’s grasp in a way that makes them both cry out in pain. Free now, Kelsey throws herself toward the trees, cradling her injured arm to her chest.

“No!” RJ shouts, reaching for her, but she’s already out of reach.

“Kelsey, stay back!” Dean says.

“I’m the one they want in the first place!” Kelsey says, drowning out all of them with how loud she yells. “This is all happening because of me, and I’ve had enough! Just take me, take my soul and leave the rest of them out of it, please!” 

They’re all shouting over each other, RJ over Kelsey and Kelsey over Sam and Sam over Dean, when suddenly there’s a gust of wind so violent and striking that it silences them all at once. Sam feels himself flying backwards, weightless for several mind-boggling seconds before his back makes contact with the grass, knocking the breath out of him.

When he blinks his eyes open, Dean is groaning next to him, weapon gone from his hand, and Kelsey is several feet away, RJ on his knees beside her, clutching at her as though she’s going to get up and run for the trees again. The galla are back behind the branches, but Sam can still see them, clawing at the edges of the darkness, their eyes glowing, their hungry voices spitting and growling.

In front of the line of trees stands a woman with long, curly brown hair. She’s wearing what looks like animal skins, one wrapped around her waist and one draped over her torso. Her feet are bare, and her face is unadorned. 

Sam knows who she is. He doesn’t even need to ask.

Inanna steps forward, her bare feet silent against the grass and leaves, her eyes fixed directly on RJ. RJ clasps Kelsey tighter against his chest, as though the circle of his arms is enough to stop a goddess from taking his daughter from him.

“I tire,” Inanna says, “of the arguing.”

Her voice is scratchy and low, but somehow rich, like a spiced whiskey. It sounds like it resonates from deep in her chest, coming directly from her lungs. There’s no malice in her voice, or in the calm set of her expression, but Sam still feels frozen by her presence, like the wrong movement of his body will crack straight through her calm and incur her wrath.

She pauses a few feet from RJ, regarding him. Her warm brown skin glows like satin in the fading sunlight. “You have made me wait long enough,” Inana tells him in her throaty voice. “I will not allow you to continue to evade me.” 

RJ shakes his head at her. “I tried,” he croaks. “I offered you Sam Winchester—you would have accepted him.” 

Inanna glances at Sam. Dean stiffens at his side, but Inana just gives them both a long, slow, look, and then turns back to RJ.

“Four potential sacrifices have been presented,” Inanna says to him. “I cannot choose which to take.”

“Dad,” Kelsey whispers. She squeezes her father’s arm. “Just let me go with her. Let me end this.”

“No. Kelsey, I can’t, I can’t.” RJ strokes her hair, shaking with sobs. “After your mother…you’re all I have. And I’ve tried so hard to keep you safe, I’ve tried…”

“I know,” Kelsey murmurs. “I know, dad. It’s okay.” 

RJ looks up at Inanna. “There has to be some other way,” he gasps. “Some way I can save her. Please.” 

Inanna regards him levelly. “There is,” she says.

RJ widens his eyes. “What?” he says. “What is it?” 

“Remington, I have been telling you what to do. You haven’t been listening.” She tilts her chin down at him. From a distance, Sam thinks he can see sympathy in her gaze, though that might be the dark playing tricks on him. “There are four sacrifices here tonight. All you must do is choose.” 

RJ seems to go lax as the reality dawns on him. Head spinning, Sam realizes a second later, and he struggles upright, his body heavy and uncooperative. “RJ,” he rasps.

“Dad?” Kelsey cranes her neck to look at him. She frowns, confused, when RJ releases her, arms slipping free. He squeezes her shoulders and gives her a kiss on the forehead. 

“Be brave for me, love,” he whispers, and then stands. 

“Dad?” Kelsey says again, panicked this time, struggling to stand up and then falling back to her knees. “Dad, wait, what are you—?”

Inanna holds out her hand. RJ takes it. Sam’s vision goes white as a howling wind takes over his senses.

Chapter Text

Dean

The first tendrils of sunrise are just illuminating the edge of the horizon by the time Dean, Sam, and Kelsey stumble back into town. Dean can’t stop staring at the watery colors of it, blues and yellows and reds, feels like it’s the only thing tugging him along down the dusty dirt-packed road. Like if he looks away, it will be sucked back down beyond the tips of the trees and night will return, swallowing them.

They haven’t spoken since the moment they woke up in the grass beside the basketball court, the galla gone, Inanna gone, RJ gone. They’d just taken a moment to look at one another, reassuring themselves that they were all alive. Dean spent too long looking his brother up and down, searching for injuries that aren’t there—but Sam was doing the same to him, too, eyes tracking Dean’s face again and again while they sat there in dazed bemusement.

Mutely, Kelsey had wrapped up Alan’s injured leg, and hefted him onto his feet to help him limp alongside the others. Sam had stepped over to help, but Alan had just glared at him until he’d retreated.

Kelsey’s face is still expressionless, swept nearly blank. Dean recognizes that expression. He’s seen it on himself, more than once. 

Kelsey lowers Alan to a bench, where he grasps at his leg dramatically and groans. The residents of Jericho are emerging from their homes, as though they can feel that something has changed. Dean can feel it, actually—it does feel different, like the stagnant air has turned fresh, like a pressure, a weight, has lifted itself off of the town. Maybe it’s just confirmation bias, a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Beth comes weaving through the crowd and sets eyes on Kelsey. Immediately she takes off at a sprint, pulling Kelsey into a fierce embrace, tears streaking her face. “You’re okay, oh, god,” Beth whispers, stroking Kelsey’s hair. “That huge flash of light—I thought—”

Kelsey shudders, a full-body movement. She leans into Beth’s body and clutches at her, arms tight around Beth’s waist and face burying in her neck.

Dean looks away, feeling like he’s invading on a private moment. Sam is staring at him again; he looks oddly calm, maybe feeling the change in the air too, maybe just exhausted. He’s standing close enough to brush their shoulders together, has hardly strayed more than a few inches away since they woke up. 

“You think it’s safe now?” Sam asks quietly. “To leave?” 

Dean hesitates. Inanna and her demons should be satisfied now, with RJ’s sacrifice. But there’s no way of knowing for sure, not unless someone is willing to take the risk and stray outside the boundary. Even after months of being trapped here, Dean balks at that; the thought of just hopping in the car and leaving fills him with an unidentifiable emotion, a knot tight in the pit of his stomach.

“Probably,” Dean says. “But we don’t have to test it right away. We should…you know. Rest up first.”

Sam’s eyes go soft around the corners. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Definitely. Rest sounds nice.”

Everyone is demanding to hear what happened, so Dean and Sam relay the story as best they can. Kelsey disappears into Beth’s house, and Dean can’t blame her. For all that RJ put her through, all of his flaws and bad decisions, he was still her father. Dean understands—way better than Kelsey herself knows—those complex feelings of grief and anger and loss and resentment.

Dean himself will never really be able to forgive RJ, even in death, because of what he did to Sam. But it’s not Dean’s place to forgive him anyway.

And Sam is alive, and breathing, and casting him looks of fond amusement when Dean shovels enormous spoonfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth. Dean chews loud and open to gross him out, and Sam flicks a green bean at him from across the table, and Bonnie chastises them both for having no table manners. 

That evening, they remove the first of the talismans from the edge of town, lifting it off its wooden pole beside the road. Dean and Larson spend an hour removing tree branches and overgrowth, so the road is visible again. They wait, weapons in hand, as night falls. No demons appear, not a whisper or a rustle of leaves.

They take down the remaining talismans, and hunker down in the Big House to wait out the night.

“You don’t seem worried,” Sam says as he emerges from the bathroom that night, the ends of his air curled from the shower. “You really think it’s over? That she’s gone?”

“I think she’d have some fucking nerve comin’ back,” Dean says, gazing out the window from his bed. Even though he thinks they’re safe, he has a hard time looking away, just watching on instinct, or out of habit.

Sam flops onto Dean’s bed, instead of his own, making the mattress creak and wobble dangerously. “Easy, gigantor,” Dean complains, but doesn’t tell him to move. Sam just sighs and shuts his eyes, his head knocking lightly against Dean’s knee. 

“You think Alan will be okay?” Sam says.

“Who cares?” Dean says. Sam opens his eyes and cranes his neck to cast Dean a purse-lipped look of disapproval, and Dean scoffs. “What? He knocked me out and tried to throw you at a bunch of bloodthirsty demons. Excuse me if I’m not feeling especially sympathetic after all of that.”

“He thought he was doing the right thing,” Sam murmurs. “We’ve both been there.”

“He’s an idiot,” Dean says decisively. “And he deserved the bullet to the knee.” When Sam continues to frown at the ceiling, Dean flicks the top of his head and says, “He’ll be fine, Sammy. Kelsey patched him up, he’ll be good as new in a few weeks, just like you were.” 

“I know.” Sam’s throat bobs. He’s obviously working up to something else, something he isn’t sure how to bring up. Dean quiets, turning his gaze back towards the window, letting him figure it out.

“Do you…want to leave?” Sam eventually says softly.

Dean blinks down at him. Sam stares back, a small frown in between his eyebrows. Dean feels thrown by the question, hesitates before responding.

“I mean,” he says. “Yeah, right? We can’t stay here forever.”

Sam sighs softly. “No,” he agrees. “We can’t.” 

They’re both silent again for a few long moments. Sam plucks at the quilt underneath their bodies, tugging at a loose thread.

“We’ve got people who need saving, Sammy,” Dean says, after a while. “We still have a job to do.”

“I know.” Sam’s eyes slide closed. “We can…tomorrow, we’ll see if…”

See if Jericho even lets us leave , Dean thinks. If Inanna really is gone, then they shouldn’t be stuck here anymore. Their car should rev through the thicket of trees and sail out through the other side of the forest, the country stretching out in front of them like an ocean.

Dean falls asleep thinking of that, slumped awkwardly against the headboard, dreaming of the rumble of his car under the palms of his hands and the boundless promise of a two-lane highway disappearing into the horizon. 

As it turns out, Sam and Dean aren’t the first ones to test whether Inanna’s spell has been lifted.

When they arrive downstairs the next morning, Larson is pulling back into town in a beat-up pickup truck, announcing that he drove Alan to the local hospital and dropped him off. “We’re free to go,” he says, a huge smile on his face that Dean has never seen before, as he gives the news. “Anywhere we want, anytime we want. It’s really over.”

Dean leaves Sam to pack up their meagre belongings, and checks on the Impala to make sure she’s  in road-ready shape. While he’s crouched in the garage, something blots out the sun, casting shade over his tools. He straightens and looks over, squinting as Kelsey takes shape in front of him.

“You’re leaving?” Kelsey says.

Dean wipes his hands on a rag. “Hello to you too,” he says. He shuts the hood of the car. It’s in perfect shape, more than ready to get back on the road. “Yeah, me and Sam, we…well, we thought, now that Inanna is gone…”

“Where are you gonna go?”

Dean shrugs. “Not sure yet,” he says. “Wherever the job takes us.” He tilts his head curiously. “Aren’t you going to head out? You and Beth and the kid, a tudor two-story in Pennsylvania?” 

Kelsey glances over at Beth’s house. Beth and Jonah are sitting outside, playing with a collection of toy trucks. A smile tugs at the corners of Kelsey’s lips.

“I think we might stay here for a little while, actually,” Kelsey says. 

Dean lifts his eyebrows. He thought that Kelsey would be the first person to skip town, before anyone else had even had time to dust off their drivers licenses. “Seriously?” he asks.

Kelsey shrugs one shoulder. “I like the idea of building something here,” she says. “Something real. Something lasting. Now that we have the resources and the freedom to do it right.” 

Dean stares at her. He realizes, after a beat, that she isn’t messing with him. “Wow,” he says. “After everything you went through here?” 

The same smile pulls at Kelsey’s mouth, a real smile curling onto her face this time. “It wasn’t all bad,” she says softly. “And no matter how bad it got, it still led me to…” 

She gestures in Beth’s direction. Beth glances up, sees them looking, waves. Jonah waves too, his toy truck still grasped in one small hand like he’s making it fly through the air. 

“You could come with us,” Dean offers. “Beth and Jonah too—you could go with me and Sam. If you change your mind.” 

Kelsey looks at him, and her gaze is sharp, shrewd. She looks older than she did when Dean first met her, taller even—she stands straighter, makes more eye contact. Like an old fear has been scooped out of her, allowing her to fill that space with something more solid, more grounding. 

“And if you change your mind,” Kelsey counters, “you and Sam could always come back. Help us rebuild.” Her lips curl again, in that small, quiet smile. “We’ll be here.” 

And she walks away to join Beth and Jonah, sitting cross-legged on the dusty ground and selecting a small red fire truck.

Bonnie cries softly when she hugs Sam and Dean goodbye, and Sam himself looks a little misty-eyed when he climbs into the passenger seat of the Impala. Dean runs his hands over the wheel as they pull away from town, past the Big House and the gardens and the school and the cornfields. He nearly forgot how it felt, the solid ease of the car underneath his hands. It makes him itch to go, go, go, rip his way through the 50 states like a tornado, even though he has no destination in mind.

He slows as they reach the tree line, where the newly-decluttered exit opens like a dark mouth. He idles the car there, and Sam looks over at him curiously.

“Forget something?” Sam says.

Dean exhales. He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just…”

It’s not that he thinks they’ll be unable to leave, like the car will go back into running circles around Jericho, starting the past few months all over again. He feels the certainty that it’s over, like it hums in his bones. 

And he feels the tug of it, wants to go roaring into the open road. But he feels another tug at his back, one that won’t snap no matter how hard he yanks at it. 

Sam’s eyes soften, like he knows what Dean is thinking, but he doesn’t say what Dean expects him to. “We can always come back,” he says. “When we’re ready.”

Dean feels a startling wave of affection for his brother, one that rocks him to his core and warms him to his toes. He reaches over, wraps an arm around Sam’s shoulders, and squeezes hard. When he drops his arm, he reaches for the gear shift, putting the car back into drive. “Where to?” he asks, as the car is bundled in shade, the trees wrapping around them like a blanket.

“I was thinking we could go see Bobby,” Sam says, leaning back in his seat, like he’s settling in for a long drive. “Feels like we haven’t seen him in months.” 

Dean grins. He pushes the speed to sixty, sixty-five, rolls down the windows to let the wind whip past. “Bobby’s it is,” he agrees.

The car bursts out of the trees and into broad, open sunlight.

Chapter Text

Kelsey

Jonah requests a dinosaur-shaped cake for his fifth birthday. Kelsey offers to make it for him. She’s three steps into the recipe when she realizes she’s made an enormous mistake.

“Bonnie, it’s all lumpy, why is it lumpy?” she wails, whisking frantically at her misshapen batter, which only seems to make it both lumpy and frothy, which if anything is less appealing. 

Bonnie peers over her shoulder, pursing her lips at the bowl. “Did you alternate the milk and the flour when you added them, like I told you?” she asks.

“Of course!” Kelsey says.

“Starting and ending with the flour?” 

Kelsey almost remarks indignantly that yes, of course, she can follow some damned directions after all, but then she thinks back, and…no. She definitely ended with the milk.

“Shit,” she says. She tries to set down the whisk, and instead it clatters against the counter, splattering her with batter. “Shit!”

“Whoa, language, my child is only half a mile away.” Beth enters the Big House in sandals and shorts, smiling at Kelsey fondly. Even though it’s fall now and the temperature is dipping dramatically with each passing day, Beth still insists on wearing summer clothes for as long as possible.

“You don’t need to wear the same three outfits all year anymore, Beth,” Kelsey reminded her last week, while they were stripping old paint off the walls of their house ( their house, their house, Kelsey still can not get over that) in preparation to put down fresh wallpaper. “We’re not trapped here anymore. We can go to Walmart and get you some sweaters. Hell, we were just at Home Depot getting paint today .”

Jonah adores Home Depot, for some reason Kelsey cannot fathom. He wanted to look at every single thing and ask what they all did, even if Beth herself didn’t know. Beth says it’s a blossoming affinity for engineering, but Kelsey wonders if he just really likes shoving his hands into piles of bolts and touching all the different kinds of wood.

“I don’t like sweaters. They’re itchy. Same with long pants.” Beth pouted her lower lip in an exaggerated look of hurt. “You don’t think I look good in shorts?” 

“You look good in everything,” Kelsey said, rolling her eyes. “That’s not the point. Eventually you’re gonna freeze and then I’ll look like the asshole who didn’t protect you from the cold.”

“You can still protect me from the cold without buying me sweaters,” Beth said, and proved her point by squirming her way between Kelsey’s arms and pressing up against her chest, hands snaking around Kelsey’s waist to lock at the small of her back. “See? You’ll be my own personal space heater.” 

Kelsey grumbled about Beth distracting her and never getting the paint stripped off at this rate, but when she pressed Beth back against the wall and kissed her senseless she really had nobody but herself to blame.

Now, Beth steps into the kitchen and eyes the mess Kelsey is making. “Hmm,” she says. “Is that how it’s supposed to look?”

Kelsey groans and throws her hands up. “Is this supposed to be so hard?” 

“Relax, Kels.” Beth smiles and reaches up to swipe a little batter from Beth’s chin. “I’ll help.”

“But…” Kelsey blinks. “You have decorations to set up and stuff. I said I’d do this.” 

“And now I’m saying I want to do it together. The rest of it is handled.” She reaches for the cook book. “Lemme see what we’re working with here.” 

Now that Jericho is no longer a black hole in the middle of a map, new residents have trickled in, seeing the potential that Kelsey did. She can see the uptick in the number of people on days like today, with everyone gathered outside to celebrate Jonah. They carve pumpkins and play sandbags and paint watercolor paintings, and Kelsey is stunned by how fast the town seems to have grown.

They’re not a proper town yet, but they’re getting there. The school is their next project. Kelsey hopes that eventually Jonah can attend school properly here, instead of being homeschooled by Beth. 

The dinosaur cake looks like a melted blob of green wax more than it does a dinosaur by the time Kelsey and Beth have finished decorating it, but Jonah’s eyes still light up when he sees it and he enthusiastically blows out the candles with one huge breath. He eats two slices and then asks for a third, and Beth has to tell him to wait until everyone else has had some.

“Do you ever miss it?” Kelsey asks as she and Beth sit together on a bench beside the gardens, later. The sun is beginning to set and Jonah is cradled in Beth’s arms, asleep. Even though it’s getting cool out, Kelsey never wants to move, could sit here forever watching the sky change colors and listening to Beth and Jonah breathe beside her. 

“Miss what?” Beth asks.

“The…out there. All of it. The world.” Kelsey gestures faintly to the road out of town. “You don’t miss the city, or…or going out to bars?” 

Beth smiles. “I had a baby at seventeen, Kels,” she says, squeezing Jonah. “That was never in the cards for me in the first place.” 

“No, but it could be.” Kelsey shrugs. “We’re free now. We could go anywhere we want. Do anything we want.” 

“Okay. So, then, we will.” Beth shifts, gazing out across the road. “We’ll fix up one of those old cars, the ones that could still run. And we’ll take a road trip, see the country. And then we’ll come home, and cuddle on the couch, and watch superhero movies.” 

Kelsey smiles, the expression stretching across her face until it makes her cheeks hurt. “Yeah? Wanna see all those stupid tourist attractions and eat greasy food at 24-hour diners and sleep in ugly motel rooms?” 

“Sure. Sounds great.” Beth glances up at her quickly, lowers her eyes again. “What I’m saying is, I’m happy with you . I don’t care where we are. We could be here or in New York City or suburbia or a shack in the middle of the desert, and I’d still be happy.” 

Kelsey takes her hand, squeezes. “Yeah, she whispers. “Me too.” 

When Kelsey first hears the low rumble of an engine, she thinks that someone has fired up a lawn mower at 9PM for some reason. She looks around, frowning in confusion, but the others are giving her the same perplexed looks. 

Kelsey goes still when a sleek black car glides into view, coming to a stop just down the road. Her mouth drops open and she jumps to her feet, staggering down the road to get a better look, make sure she’s not hallucinating.

The engine shuts off, and two tall, broad-shouldered figures climb out of the car. Sam, shaggy-haired, smiling. Dean, freckled, leaning one hip against the side of the car. He lifts an eyebrow at Kelsey’s dumbfounded look. 

“Hey,” he says. “Thought we’d come stay for a spell, if you’ve got the space.” He looks around at the decorations and the half-eaten dinosaur cake, and grins. “We miss the party?” 

Later, Kelsey will berate them for taking so long to get in touch. She’ll make fun of the length of Sam’s sideburns, which have gotten out of control, and ask Dean about the healing-but-obvious scar running from his ear down to his jaw. She’ll shove cake in both of their faces and assign them cleanup duty. And if she’s feeling generous, she’ll help them dust off the room on the second floor that was theirs, the room that hasn’t been touched since they left.

But for now, she just runs at them to hug them both at once, arms straining with the effort, and welcomes them home.