Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

"No witches this time!" Dean yells from the bathroom.  He sticks his head out a moment later, toothbrush dangling out his mouth and a line of toothpaste dribbling down his chin.  "Or demons!" he adds.

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," Sam mutters, "Because that's how this works."

Dean spits and rinses before stalking into the main room.

"All I want is just one easy old fashioned salt-and-burn.  Is that too much to ask?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Sam inquires from where he's sprawled across the far bed. 

He doesn't look up from his laptop, eyes glued to the screen searching for new cases. Dean groans and throws himself face first onto his bed. He contemplates going to sleep like this: on top of the covers, fully clothed. He turns his head so he doesn't accidentally asphyxiate himself in the lumpy pillow when Sam makes a small noise of interest.

"Find something?" he asks, voice slightly muffled.

"Maybe," Sam answers noncommittally.

Dean waits a few minutes for Sam to continue. He's just decided its safe to close his eyes when Sam starts talking again.

"So check this out, I've got an article here that looks promising. Four teenage boys dead in less than a month. All falling to their deaths."

"Huh," is all Dean bothers to respond with. It may be strange, but it's not strange enough to meet their level of strange.

"First boy, Eric Landers was fifteen. Fell from a twelfth story balcony. Police report says the parents were both at work when it happened. All doors and windows to the apartment were locked so the police don't think it was an intruder. Parents refuse to believe it was suicide. They say he was a straight-A student, pitched for his high school baseball team, and volunteered at the local animal shelter. Healthy and happy, no signs of drug use or depression."

"Accidents happen," Dean grunts. Still not their level of weird.

"Second boy, Emilio Espinoza Jr. falls out of the same building ten days later. His father, Emilio Espinoza Sr., is being held on suspicion of murder but Mr. Espinoza is claiming he's innocent and saw a man push his son out of the bathroom window. When police arrived however there was no sign of another person  inside the apartment and Mr. Espinoza was unable to explain how the man entered or exited."

Okay, starting to get stranger.

"Where is this?" Dean mumbles.

"Gotham."

The effect is immediate.

Dean snaps his head, "Alright we'll ship out in the morning."

"Really?  What convinced you?  You didn't seem all that interested earlier?"

Dean locks eyes with his brother and grins, "Dude, its Gotham. Batman."

Three hours down the road the next morning and Sam is still giving him shit.

"Dean, he's an urban legend."

"What?  How can you think that?" Dean scoffs, "Sam, there have been sightings of him for years. Newspaper articles, photographs!"

"Yeah, and there are photographs of Bigfoot too," Sam snorts.

"We aren't talking about a mythical creature here. It's a man who fights crime like a bad-ass. How is that harder to believe than the shit we deal with everyday?"

"If he is real, why dress up like a bat to fight crime? C'mon, who does that? A bat? Really? And he's supposedly been running around for what almost twenty years and not once has anyone figured out who he is? How old is he at this point anyway?"

"I don't know. Maybe he just really likes bats.  nd hey, Dad was running around wiping out vamp nests single-handed when he was pushing fifty. It's not impossible."

"Point," Sam concedes, "But Dean, Batman fights crime. We hustle, commit credit card fraud on the daily, and kill things for a living. If Batman is real and we meet up with him he's gonna put us behind bars, so let's try and keep your fanboy-ing to a minimum."

"God, you are a buzzkill," Dean groans, "How much further?"

"Couple more hours. So how do we want to work this? FBI, CPS, clergy?" Sam changes the subject.

"How many victims again?"

"Four. Eric Landers, Emilio Espinoza, Anthony Grotto, and Lamont White. All between the ages of fourteen and seventeen."

Dean thinks for a second. "Let's go with FBI. Serial killer we've been tracking through New York and Pennsylvania. That gives us a reason to be interested in such a set Modus Operandi."

"Busting out the Latin? I'm impressed. Remind me why I'm the one who always has to do the exorcisms?"

Dean pops up an eyebrow, "That's Latin? Huh. I just got that off NCIS."

"I can't tell if you're joking or not," Sam frowns, "So I was looking at the police reports and I plotted the addresses. The first two deaths happened in the same apartment building. The third across the street and the last one two blocks away."

"So, son of a bitch is expanding its territory," Dean extrapolates.

"Yeah, and that's not all. The killings are becoming more frequent. Espinoza died ten days after Landers. Grotto died seven days later. Lamont White, five days after that."

"How many days until the next one dies?"

"There's not really enough to establish an actual pattern but at this rate it will be four days after Lamont's and Lamont died two days ago."

"Crap. That does not leave us a lot of time," Dean growls, unconsciously stepping down harder on the gas pedal.

Sam doesn't say anything, just watches highway signs flash by. Dean hates this part of the job; knowing that there's going to be someone they probably aren't going to be able to save. That a kid might die because they weren't fast enough. No matter how many people they save, so many fall through the cracks. There's not enough bourbon in the world for Dean to forget that at night.

He clears his throat, "Alright. This thing, whatever it is, seems to have pretty specific tastes. We should be alright to split up. That way we can cover more ground faster and hopefully stop it before it kills again."

"I want to start off investigating the building Landers and Espinoza lived in. It is where everything seems to have started. I can question the Landers and check the apartment for any EMF readings," Sam volunteers.

"I'll see if I can have a talk with Mr. Espinoza Sr. and the family of the last victim. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Sam agrees. 

They spend the next hour in silence except for Van Halen playing over the speakers. They stop to refuel the tank and their stomachs once before the spires of Gotham start to rise over the skyline. Eight miles out from the city proper, they drop their bags in room 208 of the Econo-Lodge off exit 59 before splitting up. Dean drops Sam off in front of Tower Loft apartments before heading to the other side of town.  

Blackgate is worse than he expected. Worse than Fulsom. Bigger, darker, and on an island like damn Alcatraz. He’s glad he’s on this side of the bars this time. He counts cameras and watch towers under the guise of adjusting his tie and tying his shoelaces in the parking lot. Decides to switch out the FBI wallet for the state-provided-attorney briefcase after eyeing the razor wire running across the walls. The security is higher than he’s comfortable with without having a warden in his pocket. He doesn’t want to bring more attention to himself than necessary, and giving them Bobby’s number isn’t going to be enough if they run badges on entry. Sure enough, once he steps inside there's an officer is ahead of him, handing his badge over to one of the guards.

"Aw, come on Rudy.  You know who I am.  I'm just here to cross check some facts with one of Blockbuster's guys."

Dean listens while a second guard pats him down and puts the briefcase through an X-ray. God, he feels naked without a gun. 

“Yes, Officer Grayson but procedure is procedure. If I don’t, Waller will toss me out on my ass,” the guard takes the identification card and runs it through a swiper. An electronic voice reads, “Officer Richard Grayson, Bludhaven Police Department, Precinct 4.”

The officer laughs good-naturedly, “That she will. Your boss-lady is terrifying.”

Dean's guard isn't as congenial as Rudy. He doesn't bat an eye at the fast-food salt packets shoved into his pockets though which Dean appreciates. When he finds the flask of holy water he raises an eyebrow but lets Dean keep it. He does however frown at the silver pen-knife and discards it. Dean catches Officer Grayson and Rudy looking his way.

"Sorry," Dean puts on a self-deprecating smile, "First case. My law professor gave me that when I passed the bar. I should've known that wouldn't be kosher here. Feel kinda stupid now."

"No worries," the officer flashes him a grin, "When I responded to my first call it was a noise complaint--bachelorette party. They thought I was the stripper and cuffed me with my own cuffs. My partner had to come in and get me. Precinct will never let me live that down."

Dean stares at the man, disturbed at what passes for law enforcement in Bludhaven. Dean estimates he has a good four inches and fifty pounds on him. Dark hair and dark blue eyes in an obnoxiously pretty face; Officer Grayson looks like a Calvin Klein ad shoved into uniform. Dean shifts uncomfortably in his cheap suit. He is relieved when the guard interrupts.

"S'okay," the guard says disinterestedly, "You can pick it up on your way out. What's your name?"

"Simmons. Dylan Simmons."

Dean pulls out his wallet with the fake ID.

The guard drops the pen knife in a manila envelope and writes ‘Simmons’ across the front. Dean grimaces at the loss but all things considered everything is going fairly smoothly. They make him sign in a log book and minutes later he’s being guided away from the bubbly Officer Grayson, down a hallway and into room divided into little cubicles. Before long Emilio Espinoza Sr. is being herded into the chair on the other side of the plexiglass. Dean’s first impression of Espinoza Sr. is enough to confirm his suspicion. Mr. Espinoza did not kill his son. He’s a small man. The orange jumpsuit looks about two sizes too big on him, the sleeves cuffed twice so they don’t get in the way of his hands. He wears it uncomfortably, like a noose he’s expecting to tighten at any moment. His eyes are red-rimmed with bags under them, face slack. Everything about him screams tired and grieving. He picks up the phone and his voice sounds as tired as he looks.

"Hello?"

Dean clears his throat, "Hi, Mr. Espinoza. My name is Dylan Simmons. I'm going to be your lawyer."

Espinoza's mouth turns down, "I already have a lawyer. Walter Goodman."

"I know. Mr. Goodman is in the hospital with a pretty severe case of pneumonia. Your case was handed over to me."

"Oh. Okay," Espinoza accepts the switch too easily for a man who cares, "Why are you here? Can't you just read my file?"

Dean shifts and pulls the briefcase onto the counter top. He opens it and pulls out a stack of papers.

"I have your file right here, Mr. Espinoza. But I wanted to hear it directly from you."

Espinoza exhales. It sounds painful. 

"I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Dean takes a deep breath. Sam is better at this part. He tries to think of what Sam would say and the expressions his face would make and channel that. Minus the puppy-dog eyes.

"Look, Mr. Espinoza I'm going to tell you a secret. I've read your file." He hasn’t. He has no idea what’s typed up in those pages Sam handed him earlier that morning. “And I believe you. I don’t think you killed your son. Did you know that two other boys have fallen to their deaths since your incarceration?”

Espinoza shakes his head.

“We think your son’s death may be related. I know asking you to re-live everything is painful, but if you want the best chance of justice being done not just for you and your son, but for them as well, you’ll answer my questions.”

He watches Espinoza shift uncomfortably in his seat for a moment before the man nods.

“Now, walk me through exactly what happened that day.”

“It was Saturday. A little after three. Usually I get off around four. I own a small landscaping business. We were mulching the grounds at Wayne Memorial Hospital. I’d hired a couple new guys so we got the job done faster than usual, so I got off a little early and headed home. When I got home. I could…” Espinoza takes a deep shuddering breath, “I could smell cigarette smoke. I had found a pack of cigarettes in Emilio’s backpack oh, back in December and grounded him for a week. My father died from lung cancer when I was eighteen, y’know? I don’t want my son touching that stuff. But kids don’t listen. They don’t think about the consequences for stuff like that. As a parent all you wanna do is protect them, but they just don’t listen.” Espinoza scrubs a hand across his face before continuing, “He must have heard me come in, because I could hear him turn on the bathroom fan. Like that would help enough to get rid of the smell before I would notice. Kids are dumb like that,” Espinoza chuckles blankly and wipes his eyes on the cuffed sleeves of his jumpsuit.

“I knocked on the door a few times, tried to get in, but it was locked. So I started yelling at him, threatening to kick it down, take away his phone, that kind of thing. He was such a good kid growing up. But the past year, I guess teenage rebellion kicked in. I’ve been trying my best to be a good dad. Draw the line between discipline and fun. It’s hard as a single parent. So when he wouldn’t open the door, I got mad. When I finally did kick it open, he was already falling. All I saw was his feet go over the window ledge and hear him scream. Pack of cigarettes still sitting there on the sill.” 

Dean nods mutely, gives Espinoza time to pull himself together before he starts asking the weird shit.

“So,” he starts finally, “that’s the same testament you gave to the case detective and Mr. Goodman, but its not the same as the original statement you gave to the first responders. Could you tell me what you told them?”

The question clearly throws Espinoza.

“I…I. What I told them…I had just seen my son die. I wasn’t thinking clearly, must have been seeing things,” he answers cagily.

“Mr. Espinoza, remember, I am on your side. This could help save more boys.”

Espinoza swallows, “I thought…for a second, I thought I saw a man in the mirror over the sink.”

“Was he behind you?”

“No. It was as if he would have been standing between me and the mirror. Except he was only in the reflection.”

“What did he look like?”

“Uh. Average height. Dark hair. Possibly Hispanic? Maybe in his early thirties? He was wearing a white shirt.”

“Anything else? Any distinguishing marks? Like a tattoo or wearing a ring.”

“Well…”

“Well what?” Dean poorly hides the impatience in his voice. He has to consciously reel himself back.

“Nothing like that but…the cops say its impossible. That no one could have been in there except without me seeing them leave. Cameras in the elevators and lobby didn’t see anyone strange leave the building between me and the cops arriving.”

“Mr. Espinoza, I don’t really care what the cops think is possible or not. Tell me what you saw.”

“Blood. One side of his face was covered in blood. A lot of it. Like his head had been bashed in.”

Dean blinks and sits back.

"Did you recognize him?"

"No."

"Did you know the Landers?" Dean switches gears, "They live on the twelfth floor of your building."

"Only in passing. I was sorry when I heard what happened to Eric."

Dean nods. He locks the phone between his shoulder and ear so he has two hands free and starts shuffling papers back into the folder.

"Were Eric and your son friends?"

"No. Not that I know of anyway. They went to different schools. Eric went to a private school I think. Emilio went to Gotham Metropolitan Middle. You really do think this is all related don’t you?”

Dean drops the file into the briefcase, "Yes, I do.  Now I have one more question. Did you see, smell, or sense anything else strange leading up to your son's death?  Flickering lights maybe?  Anything like that?"

Espinoza’s brow wrinkles in confusion, “What? Sometimes the lights flicker, but nothing out of the ordinary. There was a smell maybe. Though, I’m not sure because of the cigarette smoke but—"

"Did it smell like rotten eggs?" Dean pushes, thumb poised over the briefcase latch.

"No. Not rotten eggs. More like, I don't know, burnt ozone? But that could be bad wiring?"

Dean stands up. 

“Thank you Mr. Espinoza. You’ve been very helpful.” 

He hangs up the phone in its cradle on the wall before Mr. Espinoza can say anything else. Mr. Espinoza stares at him with mouth open, phone still to his ear before he sweeps down the hall. He submits to another pat down and retrieves the silver pen-knife upon exiting. He’s surprised to find its already dark out as he trudges across the parking lot back to the Impala. It's too late to interview Lamont White’s family now. That will have to wait til tomorrow. He rings Sam as he pulls out onto the road.

"Hey Sam."

"Hey, what's up?" his brother's voice answers from the other end.

"Just wrapped up with Mr. Espinoza Sr. Did you grab a cab back to the motel or need me to pick you up?"

"Actually the doorman here recommended a nearby pizza place. I was going to walk. Want to meet me there?"

"Yeah sounds good. Where is it?"

"Uh, corner of Belmont and 23rd. It's three blocks down from where you dropped me off. Called 'Antonio's'."

"Alright, be there soon."

Soon is later than he would like. Goddamn Gotham, it’s a tangle of one way roads. When he finally arrives at Antonio's, the place is small. Not much more than a hole-in-the-wall. It has the standard red walls, checked table cloths, and paper placemat menus of a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant. It’s neither empty nor crowded. There are a couple of middle aged men at the bar and a family of five at the center table. He passes by the first booth and smothers a snicker at the young couple inside. A skinny teen with dark hair is falling all over himself in front of a pretty blonde who looks ready to eat him alive. He finds Sam at the back booth already chowing down on a salad.  

"Hey! How'd it go?" Sam greets him.

"Good. Got a feel for what we're after."

"Yeah, yeah. Same here. Oh and I went ahead and put in an order for a pizza."

"What kind?"

"Meat lover's."

"Thank god. I was afraid you were gonna get one of those veggie monstrosities."

"Nah. Already got my rabbit food. You're safe."

Sam waves the waitress over.  She's in her mid-thirties with red hair that doesn't go all the way down to the roots, too much eye-liner and a bored expression.

"Can I get a Bold Rock?" Sam asks with a smile. 

The lines of her mouth ease up a little under his attention.

“And I’ll have Yuengling, please,” Dean chimes in. 

He throws in a grin, and it's enough to crack her façade. She almost looks friendly when she brings them their drinks. Sam waits until Dean takes a long pull on his beer before getting to business.

"So I talked with Mrs. Landers and her husband. Basically they said all the same things they told the police. Eric was a stand-up kid: smart, athletic, had a pretty girlfriend. No reason to suspect suicide. When they got home after work the cops had already closed the street off. Didn't know it was for their son until they tried to get inside. Door to the apartment was locked. Apparently the police confiscated the video footage from the building for that day, but they told the Landers they didn't find anyone entering or leaving the apartment other than themselves."

"Espinoza said the same about the footage from the day his son died as well.”

“I'm not surprised. I tried to sneak out the EMF detector. It was going off pretty steady in the Landers apartment, spiked when I went near the balcony. Went off when I broke into the Espinoza apartment too, though not as strong."  

Sam fades off as the waitress comes back, this time with their pizza on a tray. Dean grabs a slice but forces himself not to take a huge bite. He'd rather not burn the roof of his mouth off with scalding cheese. He talks to distract himself while it cools.

“That matches up pretty nice with what I found. Mr. Espinoza said he smelled burning ozone. And saw a man in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, except he wasn’t in the room. Sounds like an apparition. Said the guy looked like his head had been bashed in.”

“Hm," Sam hums. "Now, something that wasn’t in the police report is that the Lander’s had just moved in - only two weeks before Eric’s death. I think them moving in must have been the trigger for our ghost activity.”

Dean lets himself take a bite of pizza.

"Looks like you got your wish," Sam says wryly.

"Hm?"

"No witches, no demons. Just an easy old salt and burn."

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

“Please tell me you’ve got something,” Dean pleads into his cell, huffing as he jogs down yet another flight of stairs.

Some might call it paranoia, but Dean calls it a rule: never take elevators on a hunt. It's far too easy for a spirit or demon to send you plummeting 30 stories to your final destination in one of those death traps.

“Yeah.So get this, I was looking into the building history and about three years ago a man named Felipe Garzonas fell to his death from the balcony of the Landers’ apartment. No one really knows what happened. The crime scene report says with the height of the balcony railing he would have had to been pushed to go over, but there were no signs forced entry in the apartment. All doors and windows locked. Sound familiar?”

Dean pauses on the third floor landing to think and catch his breath, “So, are we thinking Felipe here is our ghost?”

“He fits the profile Espinoza gave you. In his thirties. Son of a South American diplomat. And…looks like he landed head first.”

“Well, I’m convinced.”

“There’s more. Right before he was killed Garzonas was involved in a big scandal. He was accused of beating and a raping a girl, but he was never charged because he had political immunity. The girl ended up committing suicide and Garzonas fell just days later.”

“Huh. So, someone pushed Garzonas off the balcony vigilante-style and now Garzonas is offing people the way he was offed?”

“It’s just a theory, but yeah,” Sam replies.

“Can’t say I blame whoever pushed him. Guy sounds like a grade-A douche,” Dean eyes the stairs warily and asks one more question before starting his descent, “Any theories on how Garzonas is targeting his victims?”

“No, I was hoping you had found something on your end that might explain the victimology.”

“Not really. Doesn’t sound like any of them had much in common. Went to different schools, didn’t know each other. Tony Grotto was throwing a party while his mom was out of town on a business trip. The neighbors called the cops on a noise violation. Cops got there just in time to see Tony take a swan dive from the balcony. All the kids there said Tony was alone when it happened. Tox reports measured his BAC at 0.12 though, so his death was labeled an alcohol-related accident.”

“What about Lamont White?”

“Just finished talking with his family." Dean winces. "They’re taking it pretty hard, took a while to get any questions answered. Lamont apparently went to the same school as Emilio but they didn’t know each other. His little brother said he, Lamont, and two boys from down the hall were playing ‘Batman and Robin’ on the rooftop. Friends said they heard him scream, but they didn’t see anything. They told the cops he must have slipped on a patch of ice and went over the edge.”

“So, nothing to connect the victims. Their parents all work at different places. They aren’t on any community sports teams together or anything…I mean these boys were still in middle school when Garzonas died. I just don’t know what else to look for,” Sam sounds disappointed.

“Maybe they don’t need to be connected,” Dean gasps as he finally reaches the ground floor.

His thighs are burning and his knees ache.

“What do you mean?”

“When you were talking about Garbanzo—"

“Garzonas.”

“Whatever. I had a thought. What if Garzonas was pushed by a teenager and now he’s having his revenge from beyond the grave? You said the Landers had just moved in. Could be Eric moving in triggered Garzonas ghost activity. Reminded him of his killer or something.”

“Maybe, but I haven’t come across anything that would indicate anything about his killer at all. Teenage or not.”

“Relax, Einstein. I think I may have this one. Feel free to congratulate me if I’m right.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t give me that Sammy. I have moments of brilliance too,” Dean protests.

“By all means please share this moment of brilliance with me then.”

“You said Garzonas raped a girl. Did the girl have a little brother? Or cousin or boyfriend? Any male close to her that would have been a teenager when she died.”

“Uh I don’t know, I haven’t checked. Why?”

“Because, if someone did that to my sister and was gonna get away with it, I’d sure as hell push him off a balcony too,” Dean answers simply.

Dean leans against the wall outside and waits. He can hear Sam typing at his keyboard. The cold air feels good against his skin, flushed from exertion.

“Got it. Girl’s name was Gloria Stanson. Gloria had a brother, Gregory, who was 16 at the time.”

Dean allows himself a cackle of victory. “Let’s question him tomorrow then,” Dean suggests while digging his keys out of his pocket.

“Alright, I’ll see if I can locate him.”

Dean twirls the Impala's keyring around his finger. Damn. Gotham is a harsh place. The thought is reaffirmed by a woman’s shriek.

“Hey, Sammy, I gotta go," he utters into the phone, "Something just happened, I’m gonna go check it out. Call you back in a bit.”

He races across the street to an alleyway between an old tenement building and a construction site. There’s a woman kneeling on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, a bag of groceries spilled across the pavement. Dean reaches a hand out lightly touches her shoulder. She whips around, brown hair flying across her face and throws a hand over her mouth.

“Ma’am, ma’am! Are you ok? Are you hurt?” She’s shaking too hard to answer.

Dean tries to give her a once over, but bundled up in so many layers its hard to tell where the blood is coming from. She extends her other hand to point into the alley. Dean straightens and takes a step forward. There’s a shape crumpled up on the ground. A body with a trail of blood running from it to the street. The woman must have slipped in it and fallen when walking by the mouth of the alley. Dean approaches warily at first, then sighs. The body is too small to be an adult. He kneels down, ignoring the bite of the cold asphalt through his jeans and gently turns it over. The boy looks fourteen, maybe older. He’s malnourished so it's hard to tell. He’s wearing a red hoodie two sizes too big for him, one that isn’t anywhere thick enough protection for the cold. Dark hair is pasted to blue-tinged skin with blood. There’s enough of the stuff Dean doesn’t bother to take a pulse. Dean looks back to the woman, to tell her to call 911 and freezes. The officer from Blackgate yesterday is helping her to her feet. He’s in civvies now; a bright blue scarf artfully peeking out from a well-cut black wool coat, which makes him look even more like a Calvin Klein ad. He has his phone out, doubtlessly already calling emergency services, when he catches sight of Dean. His eyes narrow.

“Fuck,” Dean mutters under his breath.

The sounds of footsteps precede the officer’s advance.

“I called an ambulance, it should be here soon.”

“Bit late for that,” Dean states flatly.

Officer Grayson looks down at him. Completely gone is the goofy demeanor from yesterday. He’s pale under his olive skin and there are harsh lines around his mouth.

“You okay?” Dean asks against his better judgment, “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“A kid just died, should I be okay?” Officer Grayson snaps.

“No, sorry," Dean replies calmly, "Just figured, being on the force you’d be used to seeing things like this.”

“You never get used to seeing things like this. Or I don’t, anyway. You seem remarkably cool about it though.” There’s a harsh bite to Grayson's words that are quickly having Dean rethink his original assessment of harmless.

“I’m just good under pressure," Dean lifts his hands, palms up, in a gesture meant to placate the other man.

The officer runs a hand through his hair and releases a deep breath, “Sorry about that. It’s just… He reminds me of my little brother.”

“Hey its okay, man. I understand. I’ve got a younger brother too, even if he’s Sasquatch-sized now. Can’t imagine what I’d do if something like this happened to him.”

It’s a lie. Dean knows exactly what he’d do. He’d make a goddamn deal with a crossroads demon to bring Sammy back. His words don't do much to placate the man before him though who grimaces.  

“I hate cases like these," Grayson explains, "Street kids. He was probably squatting in the construction site. Chances are no one's going to be able to ID him if he wasn’t reported missing. They die and you don’t even know their name. There’s no one at the funeral except a state appointed witness. It’s sad.”

Grayson turns his face away for a second, but its not enough to hide the expression that flashes across it. It's one that Dean is intimately familiar with. Guilt.

“Well, if there’s nothing else for me to do here… Is it okay if I leave?” Dean asks, nonchalantly trying to back out the alley.

A gust of wind funnels through the tall buildings around them sends newspaper scraps skittering. Dean eyes Grayson’s ridiculous scarf enviously and turns up the collar of his jacket.

“You should probably stay til the GCPD gets here. They’ll want a witness statement,” Officer Grayson counters matter of factly.

“Oh. I didn’t see anything. I heard the lady scream and came over to see if she was okay. She’s the one that found the body, she can probably tell you more than I can.”

“Still best if you stick close. You have someplace you need to be?”

Dean is once again unnerved by the sharpness of Grayson’s gaze, “Uh no. Guess not. Just was hoping to get some work done at home.”

“Attorney, right? You look different out of a suit. I remember you from Blackgate the other day, but I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

“Uh. Dylan. Dylan Simmons.”

“Simmons, right. Richard Grayson. You can call me Dick.”

Dick? Is he serious? Dick offers his hand and Dean shakes it in disbelief. Who would willing go by Dick? He’s concentrating so hard on not voicing any of these thoughts out loud he misses the question ‘Dick’ asks.

“I’m sorry what?”

“Do you live around here?”

Nah, and according to your Bludhaven badge neither do you Officer Schlong, so keep your goddamn nose out of my business.

“Hm? No. I uh, don’t,” he stammers back.

“Ah. What were you doing then?”

Obviously tossing children from nearby heights. Mind telling me what you’re doing here Officer Wang? Dean shoots Dick a look. He doesn’t like the way this is going.

“Apartment hunting actually. My lease is about to go up.”

“Ah,” Dick says simply.

Anymore awkward conversation is cut short by the arrival of the ambulance and several GCPD squad cars. Dean leaves as soon as is humanly possible without appearing suspicious. He answers all the questions the GCPD cops ask him, while keeping one eye on Grayson. He waits until the off-duty Bludhaven officer is deep in discussion with one of the EMS guys before sneaking away. He makes his way to the Impala and finds Sam leaning against it, breaths coming out in little smoky puffs.

“Hey, sorry. I got held up.”

“It’s okay. I don't mind stretching my legs. What happened?”

“Let's get out of here first. I’ll explain in the car,” Dean casts a glance about the street.

They’re out of sight of the commotion, but flashes of red and blue lights are reflected back at him from the windows of the surrounding buildings. He ducks inside and revs the engine, lets it warm up for a minute before pulling out.

“So what happened?” Sam tries again.

“Another kid just died. I just spent an hour giving a witness statement to the GCPD. There’s a cop here I ran into yesterday at the prison. He’s a little too perceptive for comfort. We should leave Gotham as soon as we can.”

Sam hisses through his teeth.

“What did you find on that Stanson kid?” Dean asks, flicking the turn signal on as he slides into the left lane.

“Dead end. Gregory Stanson died six months ago. Killed by stray gunfire from a gang-related drive by.”

Double damn. Gotham really is a harsh place.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got enough evidence. Garzonas is our ghost, not Gregory.”

Sam nods, “I’ll try and find where his remains are when we get back to the motel.”

“Let’s go light up this son-of-a-bitch,” Dean adds with far more vigor than he’s feeling because, god he is tired. Its gone from cold to frigid now that the sun has started sinking beneath the skyline and his joints are aching. He turns up the heat in the Impala.

They are in and out of the motel in less than ten minutes. Just long enough for Sam to pop open his laptop while Dean layers on another flannel shirt.

“Garzonas' family never had his body shipped back home. Apparently they thought he had shamed the family. He’s buried here in Gotham. I’ll pull up the plot.”

Sam snaps the laptop shut and they’re off again. And Dean does not get lost. He makes a completely on-purpose detour for burritos. Grave-digging on an empty stomach is rough business. The farther out of town they get, the more traffic thins out. By the time they reach the cemetery they are the only one on the road. Dean drives a little past the main entrance and turns off the lights. The cemetery is massive. Easily the largest he's ever seen. He's glad Sam printed off a plot map before they left.

They sit in silence and eat their burritos until they see the groundskeeper lock up the gates and head home. Once his taillights have faded into the distance, it's time for business. Getting in is easy with a little help from a well-used bolt-cutter. Sam navigates with a flashlight in one hand and the plot map in the other.  Something wet hits his cheeks and he looks up. It’s started snowing. Light little flakes that drift down and stick to the ground. It’d be prettier if it wasn't an indication of how hard the ground will be. Sam finally pulls to a stop after about fifteen minutes of walking. They are deep into the cemetery now. Sam looks around for a bit, casting the flashlight’s beam back and forth over the headstones before settling on a black granite slab.

“That’s it, that’s the one,” Sam points.

“Finally,” Dean mutters and practically tosses their duffle bag of gear onto the ground.

He hands Sam a shovel, then digs the tip of his own into the turf steps on it, sinking the point deep into the soil. The ground isn’t completely frozen yet, so it's not impossible, but it sure as hell ain’t easy. It takes them twice as long as usual to hit the tell-tale thump of a coffin. Dean blames the cold when Garzonas’ ghost finally shows up. His hands are too numb and clumsy to get a good grip on his shotgun before he gets tackled to the ground. Thankfully before anything else can happen Sam drops a match into the grave. Dean is almost jealous of the ghost when the fuel ignites and Felipe Garzonas' spirit burns out of existence from the inside out.

“Thank god, that’s over,” Dean grumbles, rolling to his feet. “What an asshole. Seriously Sam, a ghost with a thing for pushing people off buildings? Do you know how many friggin stairs I’ve had to run up and down this week?”

Dean leans on his shovel, waiting for the flames to die down a bit before they start filling the grave back in.

Sam laughs, “A little cardio is good for you Dean.”

Dean gives him an affronted look and makes sure to accidentally fling a little bit of dirt at Sam as they start the second round of shoveling for the night. Towards the end Dean’s back is protesting loudly and he thinks longingly of the bottle of Aleve in the Impala’s glove box. When did he turn into such an old man? He grimaces and rubs his knuckles into a knot in his lower back. He even lets Sam carry most of the gear on the return trip. If Sam notices the switch-up, he doesn’t say anything. He’s not even thirty and the job is starting to catch up with him, body taken one too many hard knocks. He wasn’t joking about the stairs either.  His knees have elevated from aching to throbbing. He hopes their next job takes them somewhere far away from the skyscrapers and high-rise tenements of Gotham. Or just out of Gotham in general. After a couple of days and not one sighting of the caped crusader leaping across the rooftops, the novelty had worn off. Gotham was just about as grim and depressing as cities come. At least the job had been easy. Nothing like a good ole straightforward salt-and—

Sam and Dean freeze at the muffled scream that echoes through the cemetery. They drop their shovels and raise their guns. A second scream cuts through the air around them, sharper. All the fatigue Dean felt earlier disappears as he snaps into mission mode.  He cocks his head, trying to pinpoint where the sound came from when a third final cry starts up and drops into low howl. A howl of pain. Sam catches his eye and nods to the right. In that direction the land slopes upward. Low rounded shoulders of basic headstones give way to the obelisks and crosses of the cemetery’s wealthier inhabitants. Movement higher on the hill catches Dean’s attention. It's hard to discern the darker silhouette against the night sky, but he’s pretty sure something is shuffling among the monuments. He and Sam slink further ahead until Sam waves at him frantically from beneath the arms of a creepy-ass angel. Dean’s stomach drops at the sight of disturbed earth. Goddamn it. Why can’t dead things stay dead? He spares a glance at the engraving. Jason Todd. The dates on his headstone are distressingly close together.

“Do you see anything?” he whispers.

Sam shakes his head, “No. Lost it.”

“Alright, you keep guard. I’m gonna check the grave.”

Dean jumps down into the pit with a flashlight. It’s a mess, nothing like the zombie girl case in Greeneville. Dean tries not to look at the bloody scrapes on the inside while he tears out the lining looking for any resurrection symbols carved into the coffin. He can’t find any, but its hard to tell if there ever were since the lid is in splinters. He climbs out.

“Nothing,” he informs his brother.

“So… Not a zombie?”

“At least not like the one in Illinois. No one let this one out. It dug its way out.”

“Shit,” Sam swears softly.

“Well, let’s drop the stuff back at the Impala and see if we can find this thing.”

They go back and grab the shovels and salt they'd dropped at the beginning of their pursuit and start walking back to the car. Dean estimates they have about three more hours until dawn before they need to skedaddle to avoid the arrival of the morning shift grounds-keepers. He really hopes they can find this son of a bitch before then. Before it takes out some poor schmuck. They’re almost back to the Impala when Sam stops so suddenly Dean steps on his heels. Sam points to the car. There’s a person standing between them and the Impala, their back turned to Sam and Dean. Dean draws his gun silently. The figure reaches out tentatively and runs its fingers along the black gleaming metal of the hood. Dean bites back a growl. No goddman monsters get away with touching his baby and live… He and Sam edge closer. The figure tilts its head and crouches. The movement is clumsy, legs not moving quite right. It reaches out its hand again and traces the outer rim of the hubcap. The touch is almost reverent and Dean has had enough.

“Alright, Ugly! Hands off the car! Touch her again and I will blow you so full of holes you’ll be shitting rock salt in hell.”

He expects it to run. Or turn and attack. Or disappear in a column of smoke. He does not expect it to startle and fall backwards against the curb with a very human cry of pain. Sam glances at him, similarly confused. They watch as the figure scrabbles onto its side and tries to get its feet underneath it, the whole time making frightened sobbing noises. Sam tucks his gun back into his pants and approaches warily while Dean covers him.

“Hey there, hey. Are you okay?” Sam continues forward until the thing is within his gorilla-arm’s length.

Dean tenses, finger on the trigger and waits.  Sam reaches out and cautiously touches the figure’s shoulder. It jumps and Dean almost shoots it, but it doesn’t leap for Sam’s jugular. It scoots away from Sam as fast as it can on its butt until it backs up against the Impala instead. In the beam of the flashlight Dean can see it’s... a kid. He’s covered head to toe in dirt and streaked with blood. Dean strides forward and the movement causes the kid to throw its arms up in front of its face. Dean isn’t convinced by the cowering act. He keeps the shotgun leveled while Sam sinks onto his haunches and starts making soft calming sounds.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay. It’s okay. Who are you? Hm? Are you alright?”

The kid doesn’t respond, just looks back at them with panicked blue eyes and pants shallowly.

“Hey Dean,” Sam keeps his voice low and even so as not to startle.

“Yeah Sammy?”

“I think he’s hurt.”

“Hurt! He’s supposed to be dead,” Dean snaps.

“Let’s not leap to conclusions. We don’t know if he—

“If the kid covered in dirt and blood is what just clawed its way out a grave? I dunno Sam. I think that’s a pretty solid conclusion based on the evidence.”

“Yeah. But… Don’t you think if he was a monster he’d... I dunno… Be a little less scared of us?”

“Could be a trick. Act helpless now, rip out our throats later.”

Sam makes a noise and Dean can tell he’s debating with himself. Hell, Dean is too. Because since when has something come back from the dead that hasn’t tried to kill them? But the kid is just sitting there shaking like he's terrified of them. And he’s not sure, because of all the dirt, but it looks like maybe underneath it that the kid’s been beat seven ways til Sunday.

Sam at least decides he isn’t an immediate threat and risks looking back at Dean over his shoulder, “What do we do?”

“Fuck if I know.” He sighs and runs his free hand through his hair, “I guess we need to test him. Figure out what he is and then deal?”

Its not really much of a plan but Sam nods and turns back to the kid.

“Hey, buddy. My name’s Sam and this is my brother, Dean. We’re not sure what’s going on but we’re gonna try and help you, okay? But to do that you need to come with us. I’m gonna touch you again, okay? Not gonna hurt you.”

Dean snorts at that. No promises there. Once it finally comes back to itself and reveals whatever it is, he’s more than ready to put it back in the ground. Sam throws Dean a bitchface and gently reaches out. The kid doesn’t react with anything more than a shudder when Sam slides an arm under his shoulders and hauls him to his feet. He doesn't he react when Dean snaps a pair of handcuffs around his wrists to be safe, and his ankles to be super safe. He doesn't react when Dean pours holy water on his skin. He doesn't do anything at all in fact. They wrap him in a blanket, because Dean doesn't want to get Impala filthy Sam, and bundle him into the back seat. When Dean checks the rear-view mirror and all he sees is the kid's blank blue gaze he can't help but think they've made a terrible decision.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Sam stands uncomfortably in the bathroom doorway while Dean awkwardly bathes the kid. Like with the holy water in the cemetery he didn’t react to any of the tests they ran him through as soon as they hustled inside the motel room except to whimper a little when Dean pricked him with the silver knife. Sam got the water in the shower running, hand held under the spray until it was pleasantly warm (but not hot), while Dean stripped him down to his underwear. He thought Dean would flat out refuse at the prospect of undressing the kid but instead Dean herded him into the shower and looked back at Sam over his shoulder stating, “You know how many times I had to wash puke off you when you were a sick kid? I got this.”

When the kid just stands there unmoving in the stall, it becomes abundantly clear that something is very wrong. Sam had at first assumed the kid was in shock, but now Sam is thinking brain damage may be more likely. The lukewarm water reveals an agonizing mess of bruises layered over each other. Some of the swelling is so bad the skin has actually split apart under the pressure. Right then and there Sam wants to take the kid to a hospital, but Dean still isn’t convinced the kid won't turn rabid at any second - even as he rubs a washcloth over the kids battered skin in soothing circles - and he refuses to put an entire hospital’s population of staff and patients at risk. Dean wins the argument. Sam lets him because not even he can think of a convincing lie for the autopsy scars that are revealed when Dean strokes the cloth down the boy's chest. It's no easier to guess how old the kid is once all the dirt is washed away. His left eye is swollen completely shut and there’s a nasty bruise along his jaw distorting his features. Still, he’s younger than Sam is by several years. Too young.

Dean sits the kid on the toilet and checks him over. Sam supposes he has more experience with this kind of thing as well, thanks to years of patching Dad back together after hunts gone wrong. Aside from the bruises and lacerations, there are burns across his shoulders and back. Broken fingers, missing nails, broken ribs, and a spot on the back of his head Dean looks scared to press on. Someone (or something) seriously worked this kid over before spitting him back out of the grave. Dean patiently swabs the burns and cuts with disinfectant and layers them in gauze. He tapes the ribs and splints the fingers. Finally he kneels down next to the kid on the tile and begins painstakingly pulling splinters from his hands.

Sam turns and goes back into the room. With the shape he’s in, Sam can’t imagine he’s too much of a threat to Dean. Sam roots around in Dean’s bags, Sam’s own clothes would swallow the kid, and digs out a faded Metallica T-shirt and a pair of soft shorts. Then he settles himself at the table in the kitchenette with his laptop until Dean groans and rises from his knees with a pop. He waits til Dean guides the kid towards his bed and settles him against the pillows to keep the strain off his ribs before tossing his brother a bottle of Aleve. Dean dry swallows two pills and trudges over.

“How’s he doing?” Sam asks.

“Well, he’s winner of the most boring zombie award. Hasn’t even tried to eat my brains yet,” Dean snarks back.

“Find anything?”

“You said the name on the headstone was Jason Todd, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah, I found something," Sam sighs. "Jason Todd died a year ago. News reports called it a freak accident - car crash while traveling abroad in Ethiopia. But get this: there’s no obituary or mention of funeral arrangements. Which seems odd considering Jason Todd’s legal guardian was Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises and voted the Gotham Gazette and Daily Planet’s number one most eligible billionaire playboy. Seems like the kind of guy that would want to hold some massive memorial service or something. But instead the whole thing was hushed up.”

“Well that does sound fishy," Dean agrees. "Especially considering the car crash is a big fat lie. Doesn’t match the pattern for bruising. Someone beat that kid to death and then blew him up. Probably a good thing we didn’t drop him off in front of the hospital.” Sam gives him a confused look and Dean explains, “If they figured out who he was they’d call daddy Wayne. How do you think Mr. Wayne would react to the fact that the kid whose death he tried very hard to make look like an accident is still kicking and breathing?” Dean shoots a look at the catatonic boy, “Well…breathing anyway,” he amends.

Sam frowns.

“But what I really want to know,” Dean continues, “is if Jason Todd died a year ago, why isn’t he all rotten and corpsified?”

They take shifts sleeping and keeping an eye on the kid. Sam spends his shift bent over the laptop trying to find answers, but when he wakes his brother a few hours later all he can offer Dean is a shrug.

“There’s just so much lore on zombies to sift through, a solid 90% of which is completely bogus and the rest doesn’t match the facts. In Haitian and South African voodoo, the zumbi is brought back from the dead by witchcraft almost immediately, but Jason Todd had been buried for more than a year. If he was an  aptrgangr, then his flesh should be rotting off his bones and he should have at least tried to kill and eat us by now. By all appearances he'd been buried properly, so a Revenant doesn’t make much sense either. I don’t know where else to go from here. What do we do?”

Dean scrubs a hand over his face, “What we always do when we’re out of ideas. Call Bobby.”

Bobby is on his way to a job in Pittsburgh. It’s not far from Gotham so they agree to meet him there in a few days. Dean wants to leave immediately and get a head start, but Sam talks him into staying. The kid is clearly not fit to travel. He needs more rest before they toss him in the back of a car with a 40 year old chassi for six hours. Of course Dean refuses to admit he is deferring to Sam for the kid’s benefit. Instead he grudgingly mutters some nonsense about hunter etiquette and how it would be rude to hound in on Bobby’s case before the man even gets there. Sam rolls his eyes. He sighs and sits back down at the laptop. It's really the last thing he wants to do. He’s been staring at a computer screen for way too long already and can feel his retinas starting to burn.

“Don’t hurt yourself, I can smell the smoke from over hear,” Dean grunts from somewhere over his shoulder. “I’m gonna make a food run. Give me a call if he starts foaming at the mouth or something.”

Dean snatches the keys off the bedside table and is almost out the door before Sam catches him.

“Hey, get me a salad if you can. And something that’s not a heart attack between two buns for Jason too.”

Dean raises an eyebrow.

Sam sighs, “Look man, we don’t know what state his stomach is in. Safer to err on the side of easily digestible.”

“Dude, you are miserable. If I ever come back from the dead, first thing I’m doing is hunting down a waffle house and getting me some smothered AND covered hash browns.” Dean says it casually, as a joke, but it makes Sam’s throat constrict painfully.

Dean’s year is running out and Sam still hasn’t found a way to break his brother’s deal. In only a few months Dean will be dead.

Sam clears his throat and forces a lighter mocking tone, “Dean. Kid didn’t know how to take a shower. You really think he’ll know how to deal with explosive diarrhea?”

Dean opens his mouth to say something, raises a finger, then drops it again in defeat.

“Fine, then what would you recommend?”

“Brown rice would be best. But oatmeal, plain yogurt, or bananas would be good too.”

“Sure. Yeah. Yogurt. I’ll get right on that,” Dean grimaces and is out the door before Sam’s laughter can follow him.

After a while Sam gives up on the monster trail and turns his attention towards learning more about the boy in the bed. It's almost as frustrating for the exact opposite reason of his previous search. While there is almost an endless supply of information on Bruce Wayne – articles in Forbes and TIME, Wayne Enterprises stock analyses, interviews with Vicki Vale and Anthony Cooper, celebrity gossip rags, top 10 sexiest bachelors lists, etc. There is almost nothing on Jason Todd. He’s able to find just two pictures of Todd at charity events with Wayne, partially hidden behind Wayne in both, and one other of him in a group photo on a school website. Apparently their mute houseguest had once been a proud member of Gotham Metropolitan High’s literature society. The boy looks uncomfortable and smug in the fancy dress photos, but in the grainy black and white school photo he is cracking a grin half a mile wide. Sam wrinkles his brow and tries to reconcile it with the pale battered face under the shock of black hair across the room from him.

He jumps when Dean slams the door to the motel room open and swaggers back in with a tray of drinks in one hand and a brown bag between his teeth. He sets the bag down on the table and rolls his eyes when Sam looks pointedly at the grease stains on the bottom.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist," Dean growls. "I got you your damn rabbit food. Just because you want to be miserable doesn’t mean I can’t have a half pound of sweet beefy loving wrapped in bacon. And for Junior, there's some oatmeal and apple slices. Believe it or not they have that at fast food restaurants now - what is this country coming to?” Dean reaches into the back and pulls out two salads, two burgers, and a thing of fries. “He moved yet?”

Sam shakes his head, “No. Still sleeping.”

“Hnh. Find anything out?”

“Not really. While Bruce Wayne may be a public figure. He did a pretty good job at keeping his kids out of the spotlight.”

“Kids? As in plural?”

“Yeah, Wayne was the legal guardian of one other kid as well. A Richard Grayson.”

Dean chokes a little on a sip of coke, “Did you say Richard Grayson? Any chance he goes by Dick?”

“Uh maybe, I guess he might. Why? Do you know him?”

“Shit,” Dean sits down, “That was the cop back in Gotham. The one that was getting a little too interested. I’m almost positive that was his name. God, this is getting weird.”

“Well Grayson became Wayne’s ward after the death of his parents in a circus accident when he was a kid. They were acrobats, performing without a net when a line snapped. Apparently Wayne was in the audience when it happened and took him in.”

“We know anything about how Todd became his ward?”

“No. There’s even less on Jason than the first. I couldn’t find a birth certificate or anything. No idea who his biological parents were. There are one or two gossip sites that have some pretty nasty speculations though,” Sam warns.

“Such as?”

“Looks like Jason was living on the streets before Wayne picked him up. Makes people wonder why a rich single man would want to take in a young orphan boy from the gutters to live with him in his big fancy mansion.”

Deans face darkens at Sam’s implication.

“Bachelor billionaire collecting orphans like strays. That’s not suspicious at all. Not to mention all the accidental deaths.”

“It could also just be gossip, Dean,” Sam counters but his protest is weak.

The idea makes him feel sick. As much as he hates to admit it, Dean was probably right about not taking the kid to a hospital.

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it. Let’s see if our mystery man eats... oatmeal.” Dean adds on the last word as if it’s the most ridiculous thing he can imagine.

He strides toward the pile of blankets and hesitates at the edge. He reaches out and lays a hand on the kid’s shoulder before giving it a gentle shake. More gentle than Sam can remember Dean being in a long time. The boy comes to, not with a gasp but with a series of small twitches. Sam holds his breath, hoping that finally now they can maybe get some answers, but when the kid opens his eyes they have the same blank gaze as before.

“Hey, kid. How’s that beauty sleep working out for ya? Hm? Alrighty well, lets get some food in you. C’mon.”

Dean circles an arm around his shoulders and walks him to the table, pulls out a chair for him and sits him down. The kid stares at the cardboard cup in front of him and Sam’s wondering if they’re going to have to hand feed him when he suddenly reaches past the lukewarm gruel and grabs one of Dean’s burgers. Dean yelps in protest. He stares as the kid hungrily tears into the cheeseburger and his shocked expression morphs into a big grin.

“Haha, Sammy. I like this kid. He knows what’s good. Even if he can’t tie his own shoelaces. Oh, that reminds me. We gotta get the kid some new threads.”

“He has a name, Dean: Jason.”

“Yeah sure he does. Hey Jay, you like fries?” Dean holds a fry in front of Jason’s face and laughs again when the kid leans forward and eats from his fingers, “Sam, look! Just like a baby bird.”

“Dean!” Sam reprimands him, but Dean’s already feeding Jay another fry.

“Nice digs, Bobby!” Dean crows, “Seriously Sam, we need to up our game.”

Sam takes in the hotel room. There are no water stains on the ceiling or other stains of questionable origins on the carpet. The walls are papered in a blue and green art deco pattern with peacocks instead of painted in flat sad beige. It smells vaguely of cleaning products, no lingering scent of stale cigarettes and piss. The pillows and duvet covers even look fluffy. Amazing what a difference staying in an actual hotel as opposed to a roadside Econolodge makes, Sam thinks wryly. Dean tosses his duffle down at the foot of the bed. Bobby gives him a quick side hug.

“It’s good to see you boys."

He steps back to watch Sam usher in Jason.

“So this must be the kid?” Bobby gives the teenager a once over.

Sam can see Bobby’s mouth thin, not missing the black eye underneath unruly dark hair or the way Jason shuffles, one bandaged arm curled over his ribs.

“Bobby, meet Jason Todd,” Sam says, one hand splayed protectively over Jason’s shoulder.

“Nice to meet you Jason,” Bobby offers.

He dips his head to try and make eye contact with the boy then raises his gaze to the two young men in front of him.

“Jay doesn’t talk much,” Dean snarks.

Sam sighs and walks Jason over to the bed and gets him situated, “What Dean means is he doesn’t talk at all. He’s been like this since we found him.”

“What? Catatonic?” Bobby asks.

“Pretty much. He eats when he gets hungry, lays down when he gets tired, but otherwise…” Sam lets the sentence fade.

“On the bright side, he is toilet trained,” Dean supplies helpfully.

Sam glares at him.

Bobby sticks his hands in his pockets, “Ya’ll try and get in touch with anyone? He have family?”

Dean and Sam exchange a look.

Sam shakes his head, “We don’t know who his biological parents are, but we did find out who his legal guardian is.”

“And he’s better off with us. We aren’t giving him back just yet,” Dean finishes with poorly concealed venom.

Bobby turns his eyes to Sam. Sam nods, signaling his consensus with Dean.

“Care to be a little less vague?”

“He’s Bruce Wayne’s ward. Wayne tried to cover up his death, make it look like an accident,” Sam explains.

“He was beaten to death, Bobby. No damn way it was an accident,” Dean snarls.

“That does make things more complicated,” Bobby agrees, then growls, “So what do you two idjits want me to do with him? I ain’t no goddamn babysitter.”

Sam raises his hands placating, “We’re just asking for a little help. We tested him with everything we could think of: holy water, salt, iron, silver, deadman’s blood. But nothing’s gotten a reaction. He’s not a demon, shapeshifter, vampire, werewolf or anything we could think of. We thought you might have some other suggestions.”

“And you’re 100% sure he’s not just some poor braindead kid you’ve kidnapped?”

“You know of any good ole humans that can dig their way out a grave a year after they were put in it?” Dean crosses his arms over his chest.

“No, I don’t,” Bobby confesses. “Well, sounds like you two covered most of the bases. There may be one or two other things we can try. I’ve got a bronze blade in one of my bags.”

Bobby pulls a leather suitcase out from under the bed and retrieves a thick bronze knife from the inside pocket. He approaches the boy sitting on the bed and kneels down. Sam moves to sit next to Jason on the bed and pull the sleeve of his shirt up. There’s already a square of gauze on his forearm where they tried the silver blade. Bobby moves the edge of the bronze knife a couple inches up, closer to the elbow.

“Sorry son, I’ll make it as small as I can,” he apologizes before pressing the point into the skin.

Red beads up in a short line, and the boys muscles twitch a little underneath pale skin, but there’s no hissing or burning or wrenching his arm away with inhuman strength. Bobby gets to his feet and shrugs at Dean while Sam prepares another square of gauze. Bobby and Dean walk to the kitchenette. Sam turns on the TV and points Jason towards it before following them. He doesn’t know if Jason comprehends anything he sees, but it just feels wrong to let him stare at a wall for hours.

“Well. We can cross siren and a couple other things off the list,” Bobby drawls. “There’s a divining ritual we could try later that would let us know if he’s under the effects of a spell, but we’d have to back to my house. I don’t have all the supplies here with me.”

Bobby pulls a couple of beers from the mini-fridge and hands them to Sam and Dean before cracking one for himself.

“Thanks Bobby.”

“So what’s the case?” Dean jumps forward, ready to move on.

“There’s been a rash of people dying in their sleep. No known health problems… Just falling asleep and never waking up. One of the victims is a Dr. Walter Gregg. He was running experimental treatments in a sleep study. Looks like he was studying the effects of something called Silene capensis, otherwise known as African Dream Root, which has some pretty heavy mojo associated with it. It's been used by medicine men and shamans for centuries. Legends say it's used for dream-walking. Entering another person’s dreams, poking around in their heads. Take enough of it though and you can become a regular Freddy Krueger. Turn good dreams bad, bad dreams good.”

“Kill people in their sleep?” Dean questions.

Bobby shrugs.

“Okay, so let’s say this doc was testing this stuff on his patients, Tim Leary-style,” Sam hypothesizes.

“Somebody gets pissed, decides to give him a little dream visit, he goes nighty-night,” Dean finishes.

Sam turns to Bobby, “What’s the plan?”

“Well, I was able to get a list of some of the participants in the study from the doctor’s intern. Figured I’d start there.”

Dean and Bobby split the list of patients between them. Bobby opts to question Melissa Saunders, Delavan Miller, and Roy Washington while Dean drives to the other end of town for Denise Carboni and Jeremy Frost. Sam volunteers to stay with Jason. When Dean raises his eyebrow Sam huffs, “We can’t just leave him here alone, Dean. And this is Bobby’s case so unless you want to sit this one out...?”

As expected, Dean waves his hand dismissively, “Nah, I’m cool. You sure you’re good?”

“I’ll be fine. It’ll give me some time to research some other things,” Sam intones pointedly.

Dean swallows uncomfortably and leaves without another word. They are running out of time. Dean is running out of time, and Sam has butkus. Every spare minute Sam has had for the past month he’s spent digging for just a whiff of something that could help; spells, amulets, anything. Worst of all, Dean doesn't even act like he wants to be saved. He's resigning himself to hellfire without even a fight. How could he care so little about himself? If he had just let Sam die, eventually Dean would have gotten over it. It might take years and it wouldn’t be easy, but everyone loses loved ones. It’s a universal experience. But Dean couldn’t just let him die. No, Dean had to bring him back at the expense of his soul and condemn Sam to live the rest of his life with the immense guilt of knowing his brother was writhing in eternal torment because of him.

“Stupid selfish jerk,” Sam mutters out loud.

He turns to where Jason is sitting, blindly watching whatever is on the TV, a talk show. The host is chatting glibly to a celebrity guest chef as the chef sautés something in a pan.

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how to save Dean, huh? No pearls of wisdom after coming back from the other side?”

Sam hooks his hands on either side of his head and squeezes. He’s been distracted the past few days with Jason, but now with Dean out and his laptop open, the anxiety and fear are rising again. At first he thought Jason might be a breakthrough. If he could find out how Jason came back, then maybe he could bring Dean back the same way. Except, Sam shudders at the idea of Dean coming back like Jason. Silent, unseeing, empty.

“What happened to you, Jason?” Sam asks quietly.

He spends three hours rooting out and emailing occultists, fringe scientists, doctors and spiritualists before Bobby comes back. Dean arrives a few minutes behind him with food. The kid eats two whole cheese-steaks much to Dean’s delight. He tries to drink from a bottle of beer as well, but Sam manages to wrestle it away from him and shove a glass of water into his hand instead. For a moment Sam thinks a pout crosses the blank features, but it's gone so fast he can’t be sure.Sam grimaces at the grease on his fingers and wipes them off on a paper napkin. Dean brushes his off against his jeans.

“So what did you guys dig up?”

“Not much,” Bobby admits, “Melissa Saunders is a soccer mom with insomnia. Roy Washington is a soccer dad with insomnia. And Delavan Miller got back from his second tour in Iraq 18 months ago. He’s been diagnosed with PTSD and was looking for a way to control his night terrors. What about you Dean?”

“Miss Carboni is a sweet little Italian lady with sleep apnea, 23 grandchildren and pictures of every single one that she is more than happy to show you whether you want to see or not. If she is our killer I will eat my pillow. Jeremy Frost thinks his RA can’t tell the difference between ferns and Mary Jane. So, also unlikely to be our killer.”

“Why was he participating in the study?” Sam asks.

“Ah. He has some kind of syndrome. Charcoal-Hiltbrand or something. Hit his hike in a biking accident when he was a kid and can’t dream because of it.”

They agree that Delavan Miller seems the most likely culprit. Bobby and Dean make plans to tail Miller the next day. Sam agrees to look up Miller online tomorrow and see what he can find in the way of public records. Sam and Dean rent out a room down the hall and take Jason with them. They’re supposed to reconvene with Bobby at the diner down the street for breakfast in the morning before splitting up. They never make it to breakfast.

Sam’s first clue is the fact he wakes up before Dean. Dean is blessed with the ability to fall asleep anywhere, but he’s a light sleeper and rarely stays down for more than a few hours at a time. When the rustling of Sam getting Jason to the bathroom, teeth brushed, and dressed, doesn’t wake Dean, he knows something is wrong. He shakes him by the shoulder, smacks him lightly in the face. Even when he grabs him by the collar and shouts in his face, Dean remains dead to the world. He calls Bobby in a panic.

Chapter Text

“Bobby, what do we do?” Sam pounces as soon as the older man walks in.

Bobby tries to soothe him with a hand on the shoulder. His gaze flicks to the bed where Dean is lying.

“Calm down son. We’ll figure this out. Just like any other case.”

The words chafe. It’s not just another case, its Dean. Dean who is still supposed to have months left. Months to find a way out of his deal, to break it. If Dean dies now Sam might lose him forever. Sam can’t lose Dean. Not like this.

“Alright, so what happened? Walk me through what you boys did after leaving my room” Bobby urges.

Sam cringes at the tone. It’s the same one he uses with witnesses, the one designed to intimate empathy and trustworthiness. Meant to put victims at ease and lull them into sharing without the fear of being called crazy. He really hates being on the other end of it. He takes a breath.

“Nothing. We just went to bed like usual. Went straight to the room. Didn’t talk to anyone along the way. Once we came here neither of us left again. Dean got Jason ready for bed,” Sam nods to where Jason sits in the opposite bed, staring out like a silent sentinel, “Watched some TV and hit the hay ourselves. You know Dean, he barely sleeps for more than four hours at a time. He’s always up first. Usually I wake up while he’s getting Jason dressed. I thought maybe he was just crashing hard. Too many long nights, y’know? So I waited, but then he wouldn’t wake up even when I shook him. That’s all. That’s it, Bobby.”

Bobby scratches his beard.

“Okay, okay. So whatever happened to cause this took place before we got back to the hotel while Dean was working the case. Dr. Gregg was asleep for four days before he died. Dean knows what’s up, he’s strong. We have time to solve this without running off half-cocked like you idjits do.”

Sam swallows back a growl. As much as he wants to fight, to push for immediate action, Bobby is right. He follows Bobby to the kitchenette table where the man dumps the stack of files they’d gone through the night before. Bobby sifts through them till he finds the notes Dean made on Carboni and Frost.

“But Dean didn’t think either of them were our killer,” Sam says absently as he looks over the almost illegible scrawl.

The way Bobby rolls his head up to level a glare at Sam has him wishing he hadn’t said anything, “Yeah, because Dean’s never been wrong before.”

Sam winces.

“Look, you boys are good at what you do, I’ll give you that. Fine pair of hunters. But you don’t have a real great track record of not screwing up either. Now if you had your head on straight right now Sam and thought about this logically you’d realize that just because Miller looked good for it last night, this changes everything. For African Dream Root to work the walker has to have some of his victim’s DNA; hair, nails, something like that. So unless Dean and Miller crossed paths sometime yesterday without Dean realizing it, these two are our best place to start.”

Sam flushes in embarrassment at the scolding.

“It’ll be alright, Sam,” Bobby says more gently. “Now, have you gotten this kid something to eat yet?” he jerks his thumb over his shoulder at Jason, “Or just been running round like a chicken with its head off?”

“Oh. No. I forgot, I wasn’t hungry. I forgot about breakfast, sorry.”

Bobby sighs, “Son, just because you ain’t hungry doesn’t mean he don’t still need something to eat. You gotta think about these things now that you’ve got someone else to be lookin after. Can’t leave Dean to do all of it. Here, you start working, I’ll grab us all something to eat from the diner.”

Sam nods. He hears the unspoken Dean may not always be here to be the one to look after Jason. It leaves him with a lump in his throat. He doesn’t want to think about that possibility. Dean’s always been the caretaker. What the hell does he know about taking care of a comatose kid? What the hell are they even going to do with Jason? It’s been less than a week, they hadn’t come up with a plan yet. He wasn’t ready to deal with the Jason issue on his own. He needs Dean. With a sort of focused frantic energy Sam flips up his laptop and starts data mining for any information he can find on Denise Carboni and Jeremy Frost.

Sam growls in frustration at his screen. Damnit Dean. In less time than it takes for Bobby to return with a bag loaded down with boxes of pancakes and bacon, its obvious Dean had been had. He reveals his findings while Bobby drizzles syrup from a packet on Jason’s pancakes for him.

“Frost. It’s gotta be him. Practically everything he told Dean was a lie. Frost is top of his class at university. Not just that, but he goes to Carnegie Mellon University. Its one of the top universities in the nation.”

Dean probably had no idea. He remembers trying to explain why getting into Stanford was a big deal. Why he wanted to go there instead of settling for the community college where they’d been bunked down for the time.

“He has an IQ of 160, he’s not some stoned co-ed. Now, he probably does have Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome like he told Dean. But he didn’t get it in a bike accident. I found at least a half-dozen reports of domestic abuse charges filed against his father and just as many emergency room visits. When he was ten, his dad took a baseball bat to his head.”

“So a mentally unstable genius with daddy issues and access to Dream Root. Certainly sounds like a perfect recipe for a serial killer. Question is, if its Frost, how do we help Dean?”

“Well, if Frost is keeping Dean locked in his dreams then he must be asleep too right? If we just wake him up won’t that break the connection and let Dean free?”

It’s a good theory. Except after they clean up (which takes almost an hour because while they were plotting Jason was managing to get syrup everywhere: the table, his clothes, and in his hair) and finally make it out to the university campus, Frost has already hightailed it. His dorm and the permanent residence listed in the university’s files are abandoned. Sam tries not to be mad. He really tries hard not to get angry. He’s knows it’s not Jason’s fault. Frost probably got out of Dodge the second Dean left and blaming Jason for holding them up this morning is irrational. He can’t help but think if they had not picked the boy up, Sam would have been with Dean when he questioned Frost and that maybe then Dean wouldn’t have been so stupid to let Frost get a DNA sample. Instead, he had been babysitting. When they return back to the hotel he leaves Jason under Bobby’s care while he brainstorms their next move.

“You know,” he calls out from where’s he sprawled across the floor, “I don’t think we need to actually find Jeremy.”

He hears the toilet flush.

“Yeah? How so?” Bobby asks, herding Jason out of the bathroom.

“We may not be able to find Jeremy in real life but we know he’s in Dean’s head right? So if one of us drinks Dream Root we could go in Dean’s head, find him, tell him what’s going on and confront Jeremy there.”

“That could work,” Bobby agrees, “Just one problem. We don’t have any Dream Root.”

“Then we’ll get some,” Sam states confidently. They’ve come too far now to be held back by that.

“And just where are we gonna get that? Stuff ain’t real common. There’s a couple people I could call but it may take a while for them to get it in for us.”

“I know where we can get some.”

The way he says it makes Bobby’s head snap up. He says it with a groan, like a death sentence.

“Bela.”

“Balls.”

Sam agrees.

His fingers fumble when he calls and he almost drops the phone when she actually picks up.

“Dean Winchester, have to say considering how we left off I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” purrs the thief, voice lilting playfully.

“Actually its um, its Sam.”

“Well hello Sam, does Dean know you’re calling? I can’t imagine he does, he doesn’t like me very much. How naughty of you.”

Sam swallows, mouth suddenly Sahara dry. The word naughty in Bela’s posh accent is stuck on repeat in his head.

“I’m assuming you need something. Winchesters don’t make personal calls.”

He clears his throat, “Bobby and I are on a case in Pittsburgh. We need some African Dream Root.”

“African Dream Root, what are you getting into Sam? Being a bad boy?”

Sam chokes. He tries to ignore Bobby’s pointed eye roll.

“Look, can you get it for us or not?”

“That’s no way to talk to someone you’re asking a favor of.”

Sam hesitates, “Please Bela? Can you help us?”

“Well that wasn’t so hard. So much more polite than that Neanderthal of a brother. You are in luck. I can get you your Dream Root. But I’m in New York right now, it will take me seven hours to get there.”

“You do? You will? That’s great! Thank you! Uh…uh. What. I mean is that it? What do you want in exchange?”

“I’m hurt Sam, you think I’m too mercenary to help out friends?”

Sam frowns. Friends is stretching it. Considering she shot him once.

She sighs at his silence, “Consider it a favor repaid. Not for you. I owe Bobby one. Alright?”

“Thank you Bela, again. Really,” he responds maybe too earnestly.

“See you soon Sam.”

Sam turns to Bobby in shocked relief.

“She’s got it. She’ll be here in seven hours.”

Bobby shakes his head, “She wouldn’t agree so easily if she didn’t have something up her sleeve.”

“She said she’s doing it for you.”

“For me?”

“Said she owes you one.”

“Can’t think of what for. I gave her a good deal on an amulet back in Flagstaff a while ago but haven’t talked to her much since.”

Sam shrugs, “I don’t know. That’s just what she said.”

“Well, I don’t like it. Bringing her in on this. Best get some shut-eye now. We’ll want to be on high alert when she gets here,” Bobby warns.

Sam dreams of glossy chestnut hair falling over his chest and green eyes laughing at him while he slides black lace straps from creamy shoulders. He awakes with a jolt to Bobby’s bearded face scowling down at him.

“Bela just called. She’s just outside city limits. You might want to take care of that son,” he nods at the tent in Sam’s pants.

“Shit!” he rolls over in embarrassment, trying to hide his erection and almost falls off the bed.

He’s thankful for Bobby’s warning ten minutes later when there’s a knock at the door. He’s still toweling his hair dry after his quick and opportune shower when Bobby grabs his arm before he can unlock the door.

“What?”

“You think it’s a good idea, letting Bela around him?” Bobby jerks his chin.

Sam follows the gesture to where Jason sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes.

“What Jason? Bela’s a thief Bobby, she wouldn’t hurt a kid.”

“You sure about that?”

“What do you want me to do? Hide him in the closet til she leaves?”

There’s another knock. More impatient. Sam unlocks it and Bela waltzes in. Much to his chagrin she passes by him without a glance, unbuckling her trench coat as she goes. She’s about to toss it over the back of a chair when she pauses.

“And who is this cutie?” she asks.

Bobby immediately shifts closer putting himself between Bela and Jason. Bela simply leans to look around him, curving sinuously. Sam feels his eyes drawn to the line of her hips.

“Protective much?” she directs towards Bobby before addressing Jason once again, “And where did the Winchester’s pick you up?”

Of course Jason doesn’t reply. Maybe Bobby was right. The way Bela’s focused on Jason is making Sam uneasy. As soon as he thinks it she turning like a ballerina with one eyebrow raised, “Intriguing. I don’t suppose you’d tell me if I asked you, Sam?”

Her gaze travels from there to the other bed where Dean lies.

“Ah Dean, how nice to see you. I’m assuming this is why you called.”

She stalks back and pulls a jar from her coat pocket. What looks like dried bits of twig rattle around inside.

“African Dream Root. As requested. So, when do we go on this little magical mystery tour?”

Sam and Bobby exchange glances.

“Uhhh.”

“Bela, I appreciate what you’re doing for us. Seems a bit much for an amulet but you’re not going anywhere,” Bobby grumbles a bit more coherently.

“Especially not in my brother’s head. No offense,” Sam adds as he takes the jar from her.

“None taken,” her face is composed but her tone is annoyed. “Its 2 a.m. Where am I supposed to go?” She asks crisply.

Bobby tosses her the keys to his room, “You can spend the night in my room. Check out is at eleven.”

Bela stares at the keys in her hands with pursed lips, “Thank you, Bobby. I’ll see you boys later.”

“Goodnight, cutie,” she blows a kiss and wiggles her fingers in a wave at Jason.

Bobby locks the door behind her. Sam sinks onto the edge of Dean’s bed, elbows resting on his knees.

“Alright. Let’s do this I guess,” Bobby mutters, he fills one of the bathroom glasses and sticks it in the microwave.

Ten minutes later Sam is holding a steaming cup of yellow water with a stick a strand of Dean’s hair in it. It doesn’t smell…good. Sam grimaces. Can’t be any worse than some of the rail whiskey he’s had though, right? He knocks it back.

And waits.

“Hey how do I know this is supposed to be working?” He asks, looking up when Bobby doesn’t reply.

He doesn’t feel any different or remember falling asleep, but the room is empty now. Bobby, Jason, and Dean are all gone. Its quiet except for the sound of rain pattering against the window. Rain? He stands up cautiously and makes his way towards the window.

He can’t help the small breathy, “whoa,” that escapes his lips. As he watches the beads of water are rolling up the glass like its being pulled back into the sky. Its riveting. He watches for a moment in awe before remembering his mission and turning. The room he turns to is not the hotel room. He’s inside a house now. Spacious but modestly decorated. He wouldn’t recognize it if not for the poltergeist hunt a couple years back. He had been too young to remember it from when they lived there. It’s their old house in Lawrence, Kansas. There’s shouting coming from the boards beneath his feet. He runs down the hall and tries to ignore the shotgun blasts in the walls. If he can hear Dean shouting that means he’s still alive. He takes a corner too fast and clips the wall but then he’s yanking open the door into the basement with every intention of flying down the steps two at a time to Dean’s rescue. Except there’s two Deans. Dean locked in a grip with another Dean, throwing punches, dodging kicks. Ducking apart and slamming together again and again. He can’t tell which Dean is real. His eyes flick back and forth looking for a clue to tell them apart but the copies are perfect.

“You’re nothing. You’re as mindless and obedient as an attack dog,” one snarls to the other.

The other replies with a smile, “That – That’s not true.”

“No? What are the things you want? What are the things you dream? I mean, your car? That’s Dad’s. Your favorite leather jacket? Dad’s. Your music? Dad’s. Do you even have an original thought? No. No, all there is is, ‘Watch out for Sammy. Look out for your little brother boy!’ You can still hear your Dad’s voice in your head, can’t you,” he tilts the barrel of the gun in his hand towards his ear, teasing.

The smiling Dean keeps grinning, “Just shut up.”

Sam’s pretty sure that must be the real one. He’s just not sure enough yet to act on it. What if somehow both Deans are real? Or neither?

The Dean with the gun lowers it, “I mean think about it. All he ever did is train you. Boss you around.”

They circle each other.

“But Sam…Sam he doted on. Sam he loved.”

Sam flinches, frozen on the top step watching as it plays out.

The grin drops, “I mean it. I’m getting angry.”

“Dad knew who you really were. A good little soldier and nothing else. Daddy’s blunt little instrument. Your own father didn’t care whether you lived or died, why should you?”

The Dean Sam thinks is real charges forward, “Son of a bitch.”

He crashes into the doppleganger and knocks him over the desk pushed against the wall.

“My father was an obsessed bastard!”

Dream Dean tries to get up and Dean kicks him down again. He wrenches the gun from Dream Dean’s hand.

“All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap! He’s the one who couldn’t protect his family,” He clocks Dream Dean in the face with the butt of the gun, “He’s the one who let Mom die. Who wasn’t there for Sam. I always was! He wasn’t fair! I didn’t deserve what he put on me!”

Dream Dean writhes under the hand across his throat, “And now you’re gonna put that same weight on Sam. Who’s gonna protect the kid, huh? Who’s gonna protect little Jay when you’ve been dragged down to hell? Does Sam deserve it? Spending the rest of his life taking care of some little squirt who can barely wipe his own shit?”

Sam has had enough. He’s about to storm down the steps when there’s a touch on his shoulder and suddenly he’s outside, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala fifty feet from the front porch. He whips around. There’s a young man, his age and completely unimposing in the driver’s side next to him. He’s shorter than Sam by almost a foot. His dark hair looks unkept and he hasn’t shaved in a few days. His eyes though, his eyes are glassy. He doesn’t blink.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you? Are you Jeremy Frost?”

Jeremy’s wide eyes stray off to the side before returning to Sam, “You don’t belong here.”

“You’re one to talk, you’re in my brother’s head.”

“This is self-defense, he came after me. He wanted to hurt me.”

“Maybe because you’re a killer, Jeremy.”

Jeremy tilts his head, “You should be nicer to me. In here you’re just an insect, I’m a god.”

He punches Sam in the face and Sam’s head snaps back harder than it should. The amount of force behind the blow doesn’t make sense with the man’s slight frame. Another punch and Sam’s skull smacks into the window cracking the glass. He fumbles for the door handle behind him and spills onto the grass when it swings open. Jeremy calmly climbs out of the car and walks around the front, reminding Sam for all the world like the killer in one of those slasher films Dean loves. No matter how fast the victim runs, he’s always just behind them walking sedately. Knowing his prey will trip and succumb eventually. When he rounds the corner of the hood there’s a baseball bat in his hands.

“You know. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I just wanted to be left alone. Just wanted to be left to dreams. You can’t stop me. There’s nothing I can’t do in here,” He hikes the bat up higher on his shoulder.

“Because of the Dream Root.”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?” Jeremy doesn’t smile, but he looks like he’s trying to humor Sam, “What’s that?”

“I took the Dream Root too.”

Sam closes his eyes for a split second and focuses. Remembers the picture attached to the domestic abuse files. The depth of the eyes, the curve of the nose, the wrinkles at the corners of the mouth. There’s the sound of twigs snapping.

Then a deep gnarled voice calling out from the trees, “Jeremy?”

Jeremy’s head swivels toward the voice. Henry Frost walks out of the woods looking for his son.

“Jeremy!”

“No. No…”

Henry catches sight of him and stalks forward.

“Dad?”

The bat falls from his fingers.

“You answer me when I’m talking to you boy!”

Jeremy stumbles back a step. Sam crawls up onto his knees while Jeremy is distracted and reaches for the bat.

“No,” Jeremy mumbles, full attention now locked on his approaching father.

Sam pushes himself to his feet and swings at the back of Jeremy’s head.

Sam bolts upright on the bed, breathing heavily to find Dean doing the same on his left. Sam runs a shaking hand through his hair. Dean catches his eye.

“You get me out of there?” he asks.

“Yeah,” He replies simply.

“I thought I saw you. Thanks.”

They nod at each other. Bobby makes a little noise in the back of his throat. He’s dragging a comb through Jason’s hair. Its an oddly domestic sight. Sam wonders what he would have been like as a father. A real father, not just a sometimes surrogate for two mostly grown boys. He tries to think of Bobby married with kids running around under foot and shakes his head. Its too surreal.

“You idjits okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean waves him off. “Just need to recover a bit after getting mindfucked,” he pants. “What did you see?” he asks turning to Sam.

Sam opens his mouth and pauses.

“Not much really. I was only in the house long enough to hear you fighting with someone. I went to try and help but Jeremy found me and zapped me out to the yard before I could get to you,” he lies.

“Huh. Yeah. Thanks, again. I uh. I need a beer.”

“Yeah, I could use one too.”

Dean drags himself out from the bed with a groan and staggers towards the fridge. He pops one and immediately chugs half the bottle. The other he hands to Sam. Sam drinks eagerly. The foul taste of the tea still clings to the back of his tongue. He catches up to Dean soon enough. They stare out into the room shoulder to shoulder, watching Bobby pull tangles out with painstaking patience. When there’s only a couple swallows left in the bottom, Sam cuts his eyes to Dean. He keeps his voice low to avoid being over heard.

“He’s not a burden, you know.”

“What?”

“Jason. I don’t—I don’t mind taking care of him. You were such a good big brother to me. Its nice having a chance to be that for someone else.”

Dean looks at him, eyes narrowed.

“Just saying, that’s one thing you don’t need to worry about. I mean you shouldn’t worry at all about leaving us behind because you’re not going anywhere. We’re gonna find a way out of this deal. But I want you to know that you don’t need to worry about me taking care of Jason. I want to.”

Dean’s expression stays suspicious but he nods.

“How did you get in there, by the way? In my head,” he taps a finger to his temple, “You didn’t use any of your freaky little mind powers did you?”

“Oh, no. No,” Sam shakes his head vehemently.

“Good,” Dean grunts.

Sam laughs nervously, “Actually, you might hate this just as much as that though.”

“Sam, what did you do?”

“We uh. We called Bela.”

“You what?” Dean hisses.

“Bela. She said she owed Bobby a favor, brought us some African Dream Root,” Sam nods to the jar on top of the microwave.

Dean picks it up curiously. He shakes it, watching the twigs rattle around inside.

“Huh. There’s a lot left. Hey. Do you—do you think we could use this?”

“For what?”

“Well, you went walking round in my head. And I ran into Jeremy a couple of times myself before you showed up. You think we could use this to maybe take a look inside the kid? If he’s lost inside his own head, maybe we can help.”

“Dean, if he’s trapped in his own mind what makes you think we could find a way out?”

Dean frowns and finishes his beer.

Sam sighs, because how can he say no after trying to convince Dean that Jason isn’t a hassle?

“We don’t know what will be in this kid’s head. It could be nasty. And honestly I’m not sure this is ethical. Would he even want us in there poking around? But I agree, we owe to him to at least try. We’ll have to be extra careful, set up some ground rules, time limits.”

“Yeah. Okay, good. Thanks, Sam.”

Sam nods, tosses his empty in the trash. Bobby sets down the comb and gently maneuvers Jason onto his side and slides the covers over him before laying down himself and pulling the brim of his ball cap over his eyes. It’s a strange little family they’ve built for themselves. There’s a small ache in his chest when he thinks of the fast approaching morning. He’s reluctant to dive into Jason’s head and not just for the reasons he gave Dean. But what if…what if they do find Jason inside of there? What if they bring him back and when he wakes up he wants to leave them? What will they do if he asks to go back to the family that buried him?

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

Dean lays down on the motel bed and sits up in one twice its size. There are band posters on the walls and stacks of books on the floor. Dickens and Hemingway rest under the sweet painted cheeks of the iconic Pink Floyd ladies. Dean smiles a little. The kid is a quirky mix of nerd and cool cat. Sam would like to see this, he thinks. They had decided to send Dean in first, then Sam if he didn’t wake up after an hour. Safety parameters and respecting privacy and all that. They had argued, of course, over who got first shift. Dean claimed seniority, not to mention he was interested in doing some dream-walking of his own; see what it was like to be on the controlling end. Honestly, it isn’t a whole lot different so far. He’s tempted to dream up a pink elephant just to see if he can, but figures the kid may not appreciate that. Where is the kid anyway?

The room is dark and silent and he wanders around it like it’s a library or a museum. He walks quietly, picking up a photo of a small boy with a crooked grin giving rabbit ears to a stately old man with a mustache here, a pocket knife engraved with “Happy Birthday Little Wing – NW” there. He wonders who NW is and places the pocket knife gingerly back down. There’s a back pack spilling homework over the seat of a large wing-back chair and a black leather jacket tossed over the arm. Dean stills and sticks his head out into the hallway. He thinks he hears something, the echo of soft crying. Dean cocks an ear and tries to pinpoint it. He follows it down an interminable hallway, door after door after door. He’s not sure if the house, mansion, is really that big or if its one of those dream things where the halls stretch into infinity. He is starting to get frustrated when he finally reaches a sweeping ornate staircase that is just begging for a teenage boy to slide down the banister. Dean is not a teenage boy. He descends, treading carefully to keep his footfalls light. He knows it’s a dream, but he still can’t help but look around in awe. This place is huge. And swanky, with designer leather furniture and crystal chandeliers.

“Poor little rich boy,” Dean mutters under his breath.

Immediately he’s swamped with shame. He remembers the state they found the boy in, and remembers Sam telling him he’d come from the streets Wayne took him in. Remembers the gross gossip surrounding his adoption.

He slides through a doorway into a kitchen Bobby’s entire house could fit inside. The kitchen is immaculate, or would be if not for the cookies that cover every available surface. He picks one up curiously and tries it. Chocolate chip. Huh. He can taste it, but barely. It's like the ghost of sugar, chocolate, eggs and flour passing over his tongue. He stops and cants his head to the side when thinks he hears the crying again. There’s a door on the other side of the fridge that looks like it leads outside. He pushes through, chasing after the sound.

Dean does a double take. Instead of leading him into a garden or veranda like he was expecting, the door opens into a narrow alley. The switch from palatial to shithole is so sudden it makes his head spin. He has to navigate past dumpsters and rusting fire escapes, splash through puddles and broken glass. The smell of piss and vomit is so strong he almost gags. He zeroes in on a shadow writhing in a recessed doorway. Two shadows. One much smaller than the other and the source of the muffled crying he’s been tracking. Dean surges forward and hauls the man off the child pinned against the brick. He knows its only a dream, a memory of something that’s already taken place and he can’t really stop from happening but the knowledge doesn’t stop him from slamming the bastard’s face into his knee repeatedly. Big blue-green eyes stare at him in shock before dropping to the ground.

“He…I think he was gonna hurt me,” the voice is raspy and shaking with fear.

Then his face twists and the kid runs over and stomps on his attacker’s genitals. Over and over. Dean has to pull him off. At first the kid flails in his grasp and Dean debates whether he should let go. Pressing the boy to himself so soon after the other man had tried to—probably wasn’t a good idea. Sam would know what to do. Maybe Sam should have been the one to go first or he should have let him come with. He starts to back away to give the kid space but then the kid is clawing at his jacket and burying his face in the leather. Dean stands. Its so easy, too easy, to bring the kid up with him and carry him on his hip. He’s so light. This Jay is younger than theirs. Skinnier and smaller. He’s the kind of scrawny that comes from malnourishment rather than genetics. Dean winces at the feel of bones beneath skin and no flesh in between. Instinctively he wants to hold him tighter but he’s afraid of crushing this fragile tiny Jay.

Dean wanders towards the mouth of the alley and stops under the orange glow of a streetlamp. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s shit at that stuff, there’s a reason he leaves the comforting side of the job to Sam. He’s an alright big brother though, so he falls back on that. He readjusts his grip a bit so he can rub soothing circles between blade sharp shoulders and makes shushing noises. Lets Jay cry himself out and waits for the hands curled in his jacket to relax out of its white knuckled grasp.

He thinks if he were in this situation in real life he’d be asking the kid where he lives right about now and take them home. He’s not sure what kind of memories that will conjure though. He tries to think of something safe, comforting, with no phobias attached.

“Hey kid. I don’t know about you but I’m kinda hungry. Know where we can get some grub around here?”

Maybe it’s a dumb question- its not like eating here in dreamland is gonna add any pounds to dream kid, but the kid seems unaware of the absurdity of it all. Jay looks Dean in the face and nods seriously.

“Can we get chili dogs?”

“Kid, I think you and I are gonna be great friends,” Dean grins.

Little Jay wriggles til Dean sets him down then takes hold of Dean’s sleeve and leads him down the sidewalk.  They go maybe two blocks, and Dean thinks they must have passed through another dreamscape shift like between the mansion and the alley because the transition from slums to downtown takes place in a single turn around the corner. It’s also day now with clear blue skies and the sun shining overhead. Jay bolts, aiming for a cart under a yellow and red striped umbrella.  He bounces on his feet waiting for Dean to catch up.  Dean orders four.  Jay has already started his second before Dean hands over a wad of cash.  He doesn’t even pay attention to the bills he pulls from his wallet because hey, it’s a dream right?  Dean watches Jay inhale his chili dog and chuckles. This at least is familiar, the kid’s appetite is voracious. Dean takes a bite of his own. It has that same ghostly flavor as the cookie had. Jay doesn’t seem to notice anything odd about the taste though.

Dean is sure Sam would be berating him right now. He isn’t asking the kid a whole bunch of questions like he probably should be.  All that important info like, “So how did you die?” and even more important, “how did you come back from the dead?”  Did the kid even know he had died?  This Jay isn’t their Jay.  He looks maybe ten or eleven, would he even know the answers?  How is Dean supposed to find teenage Jay assuming one exists? Or will little Jay turn into big Jay if he sticks with him long enough?  Dean doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to leave the kid alone though especially if there are going to be more sick fucks lying in wait.  God, he hopes that part was a dream and not a memory.  So instead they just eat and walk aimlessly between the glass and steel skyscrapers.  Jason quickly polishes off his second dog and his eyes dart to the remaining one in Dean’s hands.

“You gonna eat that?” he asks.

Dean narrows his eyes at Jason.  He passes Jay the last chili dog and Jay smiles widely before shoving it down his pie-hole.  He tries not to stare too obviously, doesn’t want to freak the kid out or anything, but it’s the first time he’s seen Jay smile.  Its big and brilliant and shows so many teeth (some a little crooked) that he looks almost like a wild thing.  Its beautiful and makes his chest tighten the same way Sam’s smiles do. Damnit. This absolutely does not mean he is in anyway starting to develop brotherly feelings for the kid.  None.  At all.  Whatsoever.

Jason wolfs down the final bite and turns to Dean, “Thanks, man. You’re a good guy, you know that?”

He leans into Dean in a sort of half-hug.

Dean’s heart beats hard in his chest.

Shit.

He’s a goner.

Suddenly Jay pulls back and flashes him a wicked grin before taking off.  Dean freezes in confusion a second then startles into motion, patting himself down.  There’s a noticeable absence in his right rear pocket.  He knows its stupid.  The dream wallet with his dream money is missing from his dream jeans. It’s the principle of the matter though.

“You little shit!” Dean screams and breaks into a sprint.

Jay’s laughter floats on the breeze.  Dean chases it through the unfamiliar city.  The dreamscape changes again, sun plummeting beneath the skyline and the world goes dark.  Dean spins, foot splashing in a puddle as he takes in Gotham at night.  Its kind of beautiful in a neon-lit Vegas of the north sort of way.  There’s just as many people on the street as there were before, coat collars flipped up as they quickly make their way under the bright lights.  A cop car zooms past him with its siren on and blue-red strobe.  He treks it with his eyes til it speeds around a corner. He almost misses the silhouettes the sweep over him in its wake. He tilts his head up.

Holy shit.

Batman.

He had missed the real thing when they were in Gotham and call him childish but he is not losing the opportunity to see the legend in action even if its just in a dream.  He also really wants to see Batman holding the little pickpocket aloft by his scruff and giving him a stern lecture. When he skids around the turn though the street is empty.  Dean scans the rooftops.

Aha!

There!

He can see the outline of Batman’s broad shoulders peering over the edge and the smaller shape of what must be Robin next to him.  Dean knows he is cheesing out but he can’t help it.  His hero is right there, fifteen stories above him.  And Robin.  What kid hadn’t wanted to be Robin at some point?  They swing from roof top to roof top, Robin whooping delightedly, his excitement is infectious.  Dean follows the best he can on the street below.  Batman leaps into the air, cape soaring out behind him, looking for all the world like he’s actually flying effortlessly against the stars and Dean admires the motion slackjawed.  He’s startled by a thump as Robin lands directly in front of him, inches away.  Dean automatically takes a step back.  Robin crosses his arms over his chest and cocks his head to the side.

“Who are you.”

Dean’s eyebrows raise. Robin’s tone is not friendly, the question doesn’t lilt up at the end. It’s a demand for answers more than anything. Not what he expected.

“Uh. Dean.”

“Why are you following us.”

Dean hems and haws over the answer before settling on the truth, hoping it will endear him to the prickly teenager. He’s pretty sure Robin is a teenager. Starting to broaden out at the shoulders but with hands and feet that he hasn’t quite grown into yet.

“Honestly, I’m just fanboy-ing pretty hard right now. Y’all are like, my heroes man. I mean flying around the city fighting crime?  What’s not to love?”

Robin’s lips curl up at the ends and he relaxes his posture a bit, “Yeah. It is pretty cool innit?”

The toothy smirk sets off sparks in Dean’s mind.  Holy fucking shit.  Is this…No.  No way.  Can’t be.  He has to know.

“Hey, Robin. I was hoping you could help me out,” he leads in slyly.

“With what?”

“I’m looking for a friend.  Actually a little kid.  About yay-tall,” Dean holds his hand out beside him, “Curly black hair, blue eyes.”

Robin stiffens at the description, “Haven’t seen any kids out tonight. Why?”

“I want to make sure he’s okay, he ran this way earlier and its not safe out for a little kid on their own this late at night.”

Robin considers his words.

“Whats his name?”

“Jason. Jason Todd.”

Robin freezes.  Actually freezes, like a paused scene in a movie.  Dean looks around him.  Its not just the sidekick.  Nothing is moving.  There’s no breeze pushing newspapers over the pavement or ripples in the rain-filled potholes.  Complete and utter stillness.  Dean counts to ten.  Then twenty.  He is starting to freak out when someone hits the play button again.

“Did he send you?”

Dean’s mind reels in confusion, “Who?”

“The one with flames in his mouth and ashes on his fingers. I didn’t like him. I told him no.”

Robin’s voice makes his skin crawl.  Flat.  Dead.  He has no idea what the kid is talking about.

“No. No! No one sent me. Who did you talk to that you didn’t you like?”

“Are you going to hurt him?”

“Who?  Jay?  No!  Never, I would never hurt Jay.  I swear.  I just want to see him and ask him some questions,” Dean pleads.

The whited out lenses of his mask make him shudder.  He wants so badly to peel the mask off and see if he’s right.  If there’s a damaged human boy underneath.  It’s a long moment before Robin replies and his answer fills Dean with doubt.  Maybe he was wrong.

“Yeah. I can. I can take you to Jason Todd.”

The buildings around them melt.  Their geometry falls away and they slump into shapeless piles of sand.  Dunes roll out in every direction, gray under the moonlight.  Deans feet slide in the sand and he has to catch himself. Once he does, Robin is gone.  He looks out across the desert in bewilderment.  There’s a faint smudge of light behind him.  He’s not sure if it’s a city or the rising sun, but there’s nothing else out here so he walks towards it.  He walks for miles.  Or what feels like miles.  How long has he been in here?  Surely longer than an hour.  Sam hasn’t shown up yet though.  Or did he and he’s stuck in some other part of Jay’s fractured psyche?  Dean focuses on putting one foot in front of the other to stave off the panic.  Slowly a shadow takes shape against the horizon. Its low and squat and square. A warehouse.

He hears laughter.  Its not Jay’s reckless giggle or Robin’s enthusiastic howl.  Its manic and shrill. S ets Dean’s teeth on edge like nails down a chalkboard.  Its coming from the warehouse.  Wary of running in unprepared, Sam had warned him, "If you die in the dream you die here too."  He walks the perimeter. Like a typical warehouse there are no real windows but there is a narrow strip of glass panes near the roofline, undoubtedly so you don’t have to turn on electric lights during the day. Dawn is coming but isn’t there yet and the panes glow yellow-orange. He finds some crates and stacks them high enough to see inside.  He has to wipe at the cracked panes with his sleeve to see through the grimy glass.

There is a boy on the floor.

There is a boy on the floor in a growing pool of blood.  He is wearing red and green.  He is wearing Robin’s costume and a domino mask over his face but Dean knows its him.  Robin.  Jason.  He has a terrible feeling he knows what he’s watching as well.  A sickly looking man in a tattered suit circles Robin like a vulture.  In his hands is a crowbar.  He swings it casually into Jay’s body all the while taunting in a sing-song voice “A or B, little birdie? Which hurts more, A or B? Forehand or backhand? Don’t be shy little birdie. Tell me which hurts more?” Dean watches as the boy does his best not to cry.  He hears the distinct snap of breaking bones twice before Robin lets loose a scream when the bar descends viciously across his lower back.

Dean has had enough of this shit.  He pounds at the window.  When it doesn’t break against his fist he uses his elbow but the glass remains impenetrable.  Dean throws himself from the stack of crates and dashes to the warehouse door.  He jerks at the handle.  Locked.  He pulls and kicks.  He can hear Robin screaming and the man’s laughter inside.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  He needs to get in.  He can’t be locked out.  He can control this dream he can open that door.  He can do this.  He charges and it flies open under his shoulder.

The man in the purple suit stops his swings.  He kneels down next to Robin and tangles gloved fingers into a fistful of bloodcaked hair.  He pulls Robin’s head off the floor closer to his lips, "Daddy bats isn't here to save you this time. Bye-bye little birdy."  He’s running towards them but damnit just like in a dream no matter how hard he pumps his legs his feet move like he’s wading through molasses.  The man smoothes back acid green hair from his forehead and waltzes over to a crate.  He lifts the lid.  Dean sees red numbers counting down.  The man gives a low bow and exits the same door Dean came through.  It swings shut with an echo that rolls like thunder magnified.  The broken bloodied body on the floor shudders, then impossibly moves.  Dean watches as Robin drags himself across the floor despite some clearly broken bones.  He passes within inches of Dean but Dean’s still stuck moving in slow motion.  Robin makes it to the door one hand stretching above him to only slip off the handle. He slumps against the sheet metal, either too weak to push it open or its been locked once again.

The spell breaks and Dean rushes to the boy’s side. One of the mask’s lens is broken, a blue-green eye looking out.

“Jay,” Dean breathes. His gaze flicks to the countdown. Five.

“Come on, Jason. It’s a dream. It’s a dream. Wake up.”

Jason draws his knees closer to his body and rests his head back against the heavy door. Four.

Dean doesn’t know if Jay can’t see him somehow or if he’s ignoring him. He grabs his by the shoulder and shakes, “Come on. It’s just a dream. You can stop this. Wake up and come back with me. Sam and Bobby are waiting.”

Jay closes his eyes. There are tear tracks cutting through the blood encrusted on his face. Three.

“Jay, don’t do this. Listen to me!”

Jason’s eyes slide shut. His lips move. He’s saying something but Dean can’t hear what. He tries to read his lips. Two.

I can’t. I’m dead. I’m dead. I'm dead. I can’t.

“You’re not dead Jay, wake up!”

One.

Dean comes to with a gasp, heaving for air like he’s just run a marathon.  Bobby is hovering above him with an empty glass.  Dean sits up and water trickles down his face and neck soaking into his shirt.  The beep of an alarm is going off in the background.

“Your hour is up,” Bobby growls, “Glad that worked. Was afraid we’d have to send in Sam after you. Kid got real agitated there at the end before he woke up.”

He instinctively looks for his brother.  Sam is sitting on the other bed with Jason’s back to his chest, arms wrapped around the boy rocking him back and forth.  He’s shaking and hiccupping.  Dean gets up and crosses over to them, he gently places his hands on Jay’s cheeks and turns his face to meet him.  Eyes, blue-green and blank.  Dean’s heart sinks.  He didn’t bring Jay back with him.  He rocks back on his heels and exhales, “Fuck.”

Sam follows him into the kitchenette.

“So?”

Dean sighs.  The beer he retrieves is crisp and refreshing.  Its not enough.  He wants the burn of cheap bourbon, shocking and disgusting, on the back of his throat.

“So what?” he asks, knowing he’s being difficult and obtuse and Sam hasn’t done anything to deserve that.

“What did you see?”

Dean takes a long pull and looks at the linoleum.

“I don’t know.”

He’s not being dishonest. Of course that’s not enough to satisfy Sam though.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t goddamn know Sam!” He growls out in frustration.

Sam takes a step back, “You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”

“I don’t know!” Dean persists in the face of Sam’s bitch-face #13; the patented After-Everything-We’ve-Gone-Through-And-You-Still-Don’t-Trust-Me? “And a little bit of the other too,” he concedes.

“Dean—

“Sam! Look, its not…its not like that. This isn’t about me not trusting you or not thinking you can’t handle it. This isn’t about you or me at all. I’m not sure about a lot of what I saw. And, I’m not sure what he would want me to share. If anything. So just, give me a few minutes. There’s a lot to process, okay? Please?”

Dean doesn’t say please often.  Doesn’t usually bother with niceties when it comes to Sam.  It means a lot when he does and Sam takes another step back then looks to where Bobby has taken over reassuring Jay.

“Yeah. Sure. Sorry, take your time.”

Dean nods in thanks, “I’m going to take a walk.”

There isn’t exactly a park nearby, so Dick takes to making circuits around the hotel.  He watches gravel crunch underneath his feet and breathes in the cold air.  There’s a wicked bite to it and it helps clear his head.  He thinks about what to tell Sam.  Its hard.  If he doesn’t tell Sam, Sam will think its because he doesn’t trust him.  If he does tell Sam, he feels like he’s breaking an unspoken and inherent trust with Jason.  Jason’s secrets are not Dean’s to tell.  If only they weren’t such massive freaking secrets.  Would it be okay if he hinted to Sam enough that Sam could technically figure it out on his own without Dean telling him directly?  Dean takes another lap around the building then pauses.  There’s a hot dog cart across the street.

When he walks back into the hotel room seven minutes later he’s loaded down with a bag full of hot dogs.  He sets it grandly in the center of the pull-down table.  Sam wrinkles his nose at the smell as they congregate in the kitchen area.

“What is that?”

“This is for Jason, not you,” he peels a chili dog out of foil wrap and sets it front of Jason. “Hey kiddo, sorry for upsetting you earlier. Consider this an apology, ‘kay?” Dean swears there’s a flicker of a smile and then the chili dog is just…gone. Its almost frightening the speed with which Jason goes through food. Especially food he likes. Dean tosses a couple dogs to Bobby and Sam.

“Sorry Sammy, they didn’t have any veggie dogs or whatever. But apparently you can get peppers and onions on anything here, not just cheesesteaks…so its got veggies on it at least.”

He pulls one out for himself and digs in. He takes his time chewing, watches his brother do the same, and waits for the inevitable. He unwraps the third and final chili dog and slides it to Jason.

“So, are we going to talk about this?” Sam asks hesitantly.

Dean takes a deep breath, “What do you want to know?”

Sam’s eyes flick to Jason. There’s chili on his chin and they’ll have to get him a clean shirt later.

“What was it like?”

“It was weird.  Like the world was soft and sometimes it would change around you or freeze altogether. I think I was walking through his memories, because he’d change too. Sometimes he’d be older, sometimes younger. You should’ve seen tiny Jay Sam, you’d shit yourself he was so adorable.”

“So you got to talk to him?”

Dean smiles. It’s the kind of smile that hurts.

“Yeah, yeah I did. He’s in there. He’s in there and I don’t know how to get him out. It’s like he’s stuck somehow. But I got to talk with him.”

“And?”

“He’s a good kid Sam. Got some sticky fingers but he’s a good kid. Smart. He’d almost be a nerd like you except he’s got great taste in music and fashion like me,” Dean needles him and Sam laughs. “He does his homework and…” Dean bites his tongue before he can say ‘fights crime.’ “He’s strong. He’s had it rough but didn’t let that break him. And he’s brave. Christ, he’s so brave Sam,” Dean’s voice cracks and he looks away. Jason is brave. How many teenagers are willing to throw themselves off rooftops into danger to help others?

“Do you know how he died?” Sam asks quietly, gently.

Jason seems oblivious to the heavy tension around him. He starts rooting through the empty paper bag looking for more chili dogs. Dean huffs in amusement and turns back to his brother.

“Yeah.”

He struggles with the words. This is where it gets hard. Hard to decide what to divulge and what to keep to himself.

“It wasn’t an accident. He was murdered. Beaten by a sick fuck with a crowbar and left to get blown up. But we were wrong about it being his family. I think… Well, I think he was happy with them.”

“That’s…good,” Sam stutters, “So. What do we do then? Do we contact them or—

“No!” Dean barks sharply. Sam and Bobby exchange glances.

“I mean. He was happy there but it wasn’t…Shit, this is hard. We can’t take him back, Sam. We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because. It’s not safe,” Dean stresses.

“I thought you said he was happy. If his family loved him we should bring him back to the—

“You don’t understand, we can’t!”

“Then help me understand!”

Dean makes a strangled noise, “Because Bruce Wayne is Batman! And he didn’t kill Jay but he may as well have because the man is just like dad. He should have been protecting Jay but he didn’t and Jay died because of it!”

Dean realizes he’s risen out of his seat. Everyone’s eyes are on him and wide. Including Jason’s, who’s shoulders are now hunched and he’s curled his knees up onto the chair with him. Shit. He’s scared the kid. Dean reaches out and rubs his back soothingly, “I’m sorry Jay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I keep fucking that up today, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam asks stiltedly, “Did you just say Bruce Wayne is Batman?”

Dean nods. Maybe he promised himself he wasn’t going to completely rat out Jason, but that sure as hell didn’t mean he wasn’t going to throw Bruce Wayne under the bus.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

“I’m sorry, did you just say Bruce Wayne is Batman?”

Sam can’t help the disbelief dripping from his voice. He tries, but he can’t. Dean white-knuckle grips the edge of the table.

“I’m sorry! Sorry,” Sam backpedals. “It’s just… I guess I’m having a hard time picturing Time’s sexiest man of the year as… you know,” he snickers.

“I know what it sounds like, just trust me on this. Okay?” Dean growls and shifts his weight back.

Sam’s mouth screws to the side. He is really starting to hate that phrase. Just trust me. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Dean. To the contrary, he trusts Dean with so much: his life, the lives of others. It’s just that Dean has a tendency to get carried away by his emotions and has clearly already grown attached to their silent companion. He’s going to want to hold onto him even if its not necessarily the right thing to do for Jason.

“How do you know? Did you see him take off the mask or something?” Sam inquires, doing his best to humor his brother.

Dean rocks on his heels, “Well, no. Not exactly. But Jay knew him. Trusted him like a guardian or father-figure."

“And Jay couldn’t be Bruce Wayne’s ward and friends with Batman and them be two completely different people?” Sam questions. “And Dean, how do we even know Jason actually knew Batman? He is a teenage boy, maybe he’s just dreaming about Batman?”

Dean grunts in frustration at Sam’s reasoning. His head swivels to study the boy watching PBS in the other room. He can see the gears turning in his brother’s brain. He’s gotten very good at catching on to when Dean is trying to hide something from him. They’ve been doing it to each other for years now; withholding information from the other. It's always with the purpose of keeping the other from harm, of course - and yet it always backfires horribly. Sam wonders how hurt he should feel about this. His hurt is tempered by the fact that Dean's reluctance to come clean is clearly something to do with Jason and not him. Dean is trying to keep something about Jason a secret. Or, he is trying to keep a secret for Jason. Sam is sure it stems from noble intentions. He does trust his brother, but it’s aggravating as hell and Sam’s sure it will blow up in their face at some point in the future.

“It makes sense though, if you think about it,” Dean switches tactics, “He lives in Gotham and he’s got billions of dollars to blow on all the cool shit Batman has.”

Sam hums. It does make sense, in a way. Wayne Enterprises is one of the biggest tech developers in the world. Not only would Bruce Wayne have the means to fund Batman, he’d also have access to the technology Batman is known to use.

“By that logic Oliver Queen is probably Green Arrow,” he snorts.

Dean rolls his eyes, “Oh come on, I’m being serious here Sam.”

Sam sighs. “I know. But, Dean. Even if you’re right, how on earth is Jason safer with us,” he points to themselves, “a couple of monster hunters with demons on our asses, than with his family and the Batman?”

“He died on their watch Sammy. Our track record is already better than theirs.”

Sam huffs, “News flash, Dean! Our track record isn’t all that good. I’ve died once already and you sold your soul to a demon!”

Deans mouth opens and closes a few times. Sam can see him struggling with himself, can almost hear the words on the tip of Dean’s tongue when they’re startled by a knock on the door. They stick their head around the corner and see Bobby peek through the door’s peep-hole. He opens the door and Bela waltzes in.

She pauses and smirks at Dean, “Hello Dean, I see you’re up among the waking again. Shame, you look so peaceful in your sleep.”

“What are you doing here, Bela?” Dean growls without pretense.

“Well someone got up on the wrong side of the bed. Not so sweet dreams then?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Bela rolls her eyes, “Relax, Sleeping Beauty. I’m only here the recover my merchandise.”

She swipes the jar of left-over Dreamroot off the counter. Sam frowns. Dreamroot could be handy in the future. He had been hoping to use it to visit Jason himself. Get to know the kid that way since they couldn’t talk to him here.

“Oh, uh. Is there any chance we could keep some of that?” Sam asks hesitantly.

Bela turns to him, face a caricature of contrition, “Oh Sam, Dreamroot sells at a thousand a trip. I’ve already done what I could for you, but I’m afraid if you want anymore you’ll have to be a paying customer or else I’ll be out destitute on the streets.”

Dean turns to Sam slowly with something that looks like betrayal in his eyes, “Sam, what did you promise her?”

Sam’s jaw drops, “What do you mean? Nothing!”

“Bela doesn’t do anything for free. So what did you promise her? A favor? You wouldn’t be stupid enough to sell your soul, so what?”

“Nothing!” Sam protests.

“Uh, if I may,” Bela inserts herself into the conversation, “Your interrogation is completely unnecessary. Consider this pro-bono. Out of the goodness of my heart for our dear mutual friend Bobby.”

Bobby raises his hands in deference.

“You’d have to have one first,” Dean sneers.

Bela raises a hand over her left breast and gasps in mock indignation.

“So this is where good deeds get me? I knew there was a reason I never made them a habit. I’d say it’s been a pleasure working with you boys, especially you cutie,” she purrs and ruffles Jason’s hair. Dean actually snarls at that. “But the atmosphere is feeling distinctly chilly,” she finishes, removing her hand.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” Dean grits out.

Bela just raises one slim eyebrow, “Really, and I thought Bobby was overprotective. You’ve gone positively Papa-Bear Dean. What’s so interesting about your quiet little mystery friend here?” She peers intently at Jason, eyes narrowed.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Dean pushes her towards the door.

“Thanks for the help Bela,” Sam smoothes over, “Really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome Sam. Dean, Bobby,” she waves cheekily to them over her shoulder and struts out of sight.

“I really do not like her,” Dean grumbles, “And I do not like her knowing about Jay.”

Sam agrees, a vague foreboding lingering in his mind, “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

“So where you boys headed now?” Bobby asks.

Sam and Dean exchange glances.

“Dean, if you can’t give me a good reason that Jason is safer with us than his family, we shouldn’t keep him from them.”

“You mean other than the fact we still don’t know how he came back? Is that not enough?”

Dean’s eyes flick around the room settling on him, Bobby, and Jason in turn. He seems to deflate then something in his expression sparks and he raises his hand.

“Wait, wait. Jay said something. In the dream. He mentioned a… a guy. Sounded creepy as fuck… With flames in his mouth and ashes on his fingers. Jay asked if he had sent me. I don’t know who he was talking about. But Jay said he had told him 'no.' I don’t know what to. It was strange. It didn’t fit in with what we had been talking about and everything froze around us. You gotta admit there’s no way that’s not something we should check into,” he entreats Sam with a look.

Maybe Sam should fight harder, but it does sound like their brand of work and it is their first lead on what may have brought Jason back. It could turn into a lead on bringing Dean back. Jason’s been dead for over a year. The Wayne’s will never know if they bring him back a month or two late.

“And like I said, there’s a couple more rituals I can try if we go back to my house. There’s also a damn good psychic that lives nearby,” Bobby adds.

“Alright,” Sam dips his head, “Alright, let’s try those first.”

They’re skirting Akron on I-80 after hightailing it out of Pittsburgh that morning. Sam notices Dean is only putting on the most upbeat cassettes, no doubt for Jason’s benefit. Jason may not be capable of communicating but he seems to react to the moods of those around him, curling in on himself when they shout or argue. Sam’s taken on the duty of intermittently checking on Jason so Dean can concentrate on the dotted lines of highway lanes. The last few times Sam’s turned around in his seat to look back Jason’s been absentmindedly nodding along to the beat. It’s cute. When he looks back this time however, Jason is shifting uncomfortably.

“Hey, I think Jason needs a bathroom.”

Dean checks the rear-view mirror and sighs, “Shit, okay. Keep an eye peeled for a rest stop.”

They pull off at a gas station exit eight miles later. They aren’t there for more than ten minutes. Dean tops off the tank while Sam ushers Jason inside to use the toilet. He peruses the back aisles next to the door and waits for the sound of a flush. Jason’s motor skills have been improving; he can mostly take care of business on his own, but requires some help every now and then. Sam’s thinking about grabbing a tin of almonds when he hears the rush of water. He raps on the door with his knuckles.

“You okay in there, Jay?” he calls out, mostly as a polite warning before he cracks the door and steps in.

Jason is pulling a pair of Dean’s sweatpants up the final couple inches of skin.

“You need to wash your hands now, remember?” Sam points at the sink.

Jason stares back at him until Sam turns the tap on. Only once Jason sees the water running from the faucet does he step forward. Sam pushes down on the soap dispenser and then wipes the soap onto Jason’s hands. Jason takes over from there, rubbing his palms together then holding them under the tap til the suds are gone. Sam guides him to the electric hand dryer and holds his hands out towards the stream of air. Before they leave Sam grabs some snacks and drinks for the road; bottled water, cashews, jerky, and an ice tea. He keeps one eye on the dark head of hair while he pays at the counter. The cashier shoves his change back across the peeling laminate at him. He scoops it up, missing a few coins in his haste to get Jason back to the car. His face is still bruised badly and he’d rather not let anyone get a good look and bring unnecessary attention their way. Sam opens the Impala’s rear door and makes sure Jason’s buckled in securely before climbing into the passenger’s seat. He hands Dean a water bottle and the pack of jerky and they continue on. It’s maybe twenty minutes later Sam notices Dean’s eyes darting repeatedly up to the rear-view mirror.

“What’s up?” he asks his brother.

“Does Jay have something back there? It looks like he’s got something in his hands,” Dean mutters, eyes narrowed.

Sam turns around and his mouth drops open. Jason is tapping a box cigarettes against the palm of his hand.

“What the—where did he get those?” Sam yelps.

“What’s he got?”

“A pack of menthols!”

“Well I sure as hell didn’t give them to him. Geez, Sam. You were the one who was supposed to be looking out for him in there,” Dean berates him.

“I swear he was in my sight the whole time! I have no idea how he got those, they keep them behind the counter there’s no way he got back there and the cashier or me didn’t see him.”

Dean snorts in laughter, “Sticky fingers, man. I told you. Oh man, little Jay, you are a bucket of surprises.”

It’s a fifteen hour drive to Bobby’s from Pittsburgh. Usually they’d go it all in one, but with Jason they break it into two days. That gives Bobby time to get there ahead of them and prepare – whether that’s putting new sheets on the bed in the spare room or making sure he’s got enough wolfsbane for whatever ritual he has in mind, Sam’s not sure. Either way, they have a lot of bathroom breaks between them and Bobby’s. It becomes part of the routine now; anytime they stop whoever is in charge of Jason has to give him a pat-down before they leave to make sure he’s not smuggling anything out. They really don’t need to add petty shoplifting onto their extensive criminal records. Before they hit Chicago they relieve him of another pack of cigarettes, a stick of bubble gum, and a candy bar.

They stop just outside of the city for the night. For dinner they head to an almost reputable looking bar-and-restaurant close by. The lights are dim but the tables are clean. They’re blowing through money faster than usual with the extra mouth to feed, and Jason eats a lot. They had thought a deep dish pizza would be enough for the three of them for dinner. They were wrong. They have to order bread sticks and poutine to supplement. Deep dish pizza was also not the best call for someone who’s been eating mostly with their hands lately. Their waitress, a woman with pin-straight dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a name tag that reads ‘Darleen,’ is infinitely understanding and brings them sani-wipes and napkins by the handful. Sam makes a mental note to leave her a hefty tip.

Dean laments the fact that Jason hasn’t shown interest in lifting anything useful like credit cards so far when he sees the prices on the draft list. They keep to the cheap pours and wait for the evening crowd to roll in. Sam sticks close to Jason and watches the other bar patrons warily when Dean excuses himself to check out the pool tables in the side room. Sam stacks their plates and glasses, gathering their balled up napkins and straw wrappers and tossing them in the empty poutine basket. Darleen wanders back over with a smile and sets a stainless steel tumbler in front of Jason.

“Milkshake is on the house,” she tells Sam with a wink. She waves off his stuttered refusal. “You’re real good with him,” she says nodding at Jason.

“Huh, oh. Thanks.”

“My son’s autistic. On the pretty far end of the spectrum, non-verbal,” she explains, “Lots of people don’t understand. My husband didn’t. He left when they told us he’d never be able to have a real conversation with Eli or coach him in little league. But Eli’s my little angel. Wouldn’t trade him for the world.”

“I can’t imagine it’s easy being a single parent of a child with special needs. I’m sure you’re an amazing mom,” Sam says sincerely. He watches Jason pull hungrily on the thick straw, “Jay… He uh, was in an accident. It’s taking some adjustment, but we’re getting there.”

Truth delivered smoothly in the stylings of a lie.

Darleen gives him a pat on the shoulder, “Hardest part is when you have to leave them. My mom stays with Eli while I’m at work, but there’s been a couple times where he was playing in the yard and… Well, kids can be cruel. Especially to someone who can’t defend themselves. You always worry. Anyways, sorry to chatter on so much—here’s your check.”

Sam looks at the receipt, torn. He really doesn’t want Jason here while they try and hustle up some cash in case things go poorly, but he also doesn’t want to leave Dean alone for the same reason. Hustling is easier and safer in a two-man team. Sam weighs the pros and cons of taking Jason back to the motel and leaving Dean to fend for himself against staying. He and Dean have perfected their act over the years; the script, the roles, reading the audience. More than half of the time their opponents don’t even realize they’ve been had. There’s no way to guarantee tonight will be one of those nights though. He decides he’s not willing to risk Jason’s safety. Dean has taken down wendigos and demons, he can handle a couple drunks on his own. Sam fishes out cash for the bill and hunts down Dean for the keys to the Impala.

“You heading out?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, I’m gonna take Jason back to the motel. Think you can catch a cab tonight?”

Dean’s already turning back to the felt-topped table, “No problem, see you in a few.”

Sam feels a bit better about leaving now that he has Dean’s blessing, and also after sizing up his brother’s competition. The feeling drops away immediately when he comes back to an empty booth. He does a frantic scan of the dining area before running to the bar where Darleen is refilling pint glasses. He taps her arm to get her attention.

“Hey, Darleen. Did you see Jay leave?”

Darleen’s eyes flick to the table, “No. Sorry, I’ve been back here.”

Sam’s fingers unconsciously dig tighter into her skin.

“Hey, hey. Calm down, he couldn’t have gotten far,” she says soothing and practical, “Let me help look. I’ll check the bathrooms, you check the parking lot, okay?”

Sam nods and sprints out of the entrance. He freezes at the tableau before of him. Two drunken sots are pushing Jason around between the cars in the parking lot. Sam’s blood boils when he hears the word ‘retard’ from the young man in a Cubs jersey accompanied by a harsh shove that sends Jason back a step. Sam breaks into a run and opens his mouth to holler. The other jerk has positioned himself behind Jason and Sam knows where this is going; Jerk 2 will hold while Cubs Jersey punches.

Except the punch never lands. As soon as the asshole wraps his arm around Jason’s neck from behind, Jason reacts with startling efficient brutality. He digs his fingers into the arm and drops his weight into a crouch. Before the thug realizes what’s going on Jason rotates lightning fast, hooking his knee behind his attacker’s and pulling on the arm in his grip. The move overbalances the man and sends him tumbling to the ground, head connecting with the asphalt with a loud smack. But Jason’s not done yet. He still has the man’s arm, now extended and taut, a hairsbreadth from snapping. He stomps on the man’s ribs once, twice for good measure, before letting go.

Sam’s jaw drops. What the hell just happened? He could have stood there bewildered until hell froze over if not for the screams of the two men. Jerk 2 lying on the ground clutching his arm while his friend in the Cubs Jersey runs away as fast as humanly possible. Someone gasps behind him and when he turns, Darleen is standing in the open doorway hands over her mouth. Shit. They need to get out of here before the cops show. Sam steps over the incapacitated bully to check Jason over hurriedly. Once he affirms there are no new busted lips or black eyes he bundles Jay into the car and starts the engine. He’s in the middle of texting Dean an SOS when his brother comes barreling out of the restaurant, apparently drawn by the noise and launches himself into the passenger’s seat. Sam peels rubber.

“What the hell Sam?! What happened? I didn’t even break a hundred in there yet! Was it demons or what?” Dean demands.

“I don’t know what happened,” Sam snaps, “But I get the feeling you might.”

Dean’s jaw drops and Sam cuts him off before he can argue back, “Save it ‘til we get to the motel.”

He would love to lay into Dean right now but he can already see Jason folding in on himself, chin tucked and eyes wide in the rear-view mirror. They need to have this conversation out of his hearing. Sam curses his brother under his breath. Dean knows. He’s positive. It all makes sense now: the unswayable confidence that Bruce Wayne is the Batman, his assertion that Jason knew and was close to the Batman. Dean has known ever since Bobby tossed that glass of water in his face. He tries to conciliate himself with the fact Dean had withheld this from him out of respect for Jason’s privacy… But damn it! He has the right to know when they’re road-tripping across the country with a live grenade in the backseat. It’s one of those 'important' things worth sharing. Sam pulls into the motel parking lot with a sharp squeal that has Dean protesting in defense of his baby. He squeezes the steering wheel in his hands, knuckles white, until the leather squeaks.

He takes a breath and then calmly tells Dean, “You go and get Jason settled first. I’ll wait for you here. We need to talk”

Dean looks like he wants to argue, but unbuckles and eases Jason up and out of the car. Sam sags in guilt when he sees Jason’s fingers flex nervously in Dean’s jacket. He forces himself to take deep breaths and stiffly crawls out of the Impala. He’d been in too much of a rush to adjust the seat earlier and his legs are cramped from driving in his brother’s settings. He leans against the hood and takes in lungfuls of the cold night air, watches his breath puff out in curls from his lips and nose. It’s a long while before Dean comes out, shutting the door to the room quietly behind him. It’s a good thing, it gives his temper time to cool.

“Okay, mind explaining why you busted us like a bat out of hell back there and left two guys crying in the parking lot?” Dean asks, voice low but pointed.

Sam glares at him, “First. Is there anything you want to tell me, Dean? Anything important?”

He hates how steady his brother’s features stay when Dean replies, “Nothing comes to mind.”

“Really? Because I feel like there’s something kind of big you’re keeping from me.”

“What happened back there?” Dean counters sharply.

“Jason happened. I’m not the one who left those guys crying in the parking lot, Dean!”

That takes Dean aback. “What?”

“He must have wandered outside when I came to get the keys, because when I found him they were pushing him around in the parking lot,” Sam hisses, “and then everything just went crazy!”

“Sam, we do crazy every day,” Dean huffs wryly.

“We do monster crazy…demon crazy! This was not our brand of crazy!”

Dean raises an eyebrow, “Okay, what kind of crazy then?”

“I don’t know! Like, ninja crazy.”

Dean’s face screws up, “Ninja crazy? You were attacked by ninjas at Rico’s Pizza?”

“No!” Sam hisses causing Dean to flinch, “We were not attacked by ninjas. Jason went ninja on those guys asses!”

Dean backs up a step and glances at the numbered door of their room as if he’s trying to check up on its occupant through the wood.

“Wait. Are you saying Jay attacked those guys?”

“Yes!” Sam shouts, then drops his voice, “I mean, no. He was provoked and defending himself. Those jerk-offs were pushing him around, but before I could get over there one of them tried to grab him and…”

“And?”

“And that’s when Jason went all ninja crazy and dropped the guy like Bruce Lee. Broke his arm and probably a couple ribs too.”

“Okay, and you’re mad at me because of this why?” Dean questions, “I would think Jay defending himself is a good thing.”

“Would you fucking stop playing dumb, Dean! Look, I get you’re trying to help the kid - but he didn’t fight like you or me when we get into some bar brawl. He’s been trained. I’ve never seen anyone move like that who was human. He was fast and precise, and honestly? It was terrifying.”

Dean sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. Sam is close now, he knows his brother’s tells.

“And I think you’re not surprised to hear that, because you already knew,” Sam pushes.

Dean swears under his breath.

“So I’m going to ask you again: is there something important you should tell me about Jason?”

Dean kicks at the rocks under his feet, “I don’t want to betray his trust, Sam.”

Sam softens at his brother’s self-reproach, “I know, but Dean, you need to tell me if someone we’re living with 24/7 is dangerous!”

“He’s not dangerous! Not to us. Or Bobby. He’d never attack innocent bystanders.”

“But if provoked?”

“Yes,” Dean admits.

“Dean, I need you tell me the truth. I’m pretty sure I already figured it out, but I want to hear it from you. Who is Jason really?”

Dean turns his eyes up to Sam slowly, “Jason Todd is Robin. Or, was Robin. I guess it’s someone else wearing the costume now. That’s why we can’t take him back, Sam—Wayne is dressing kids up in uniforms and throwing them out on the street like child soldiers. Jay died and he already has another one out there. The guy either doesn’t learn or doesn’t care.”

Sam lets out the breath he’d been holding, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay," he repeats, firmer. "I just wish you had told me.”

“I know. Are we—?”

“We’re good,” Sam reassures him.

“Alright. Then let’s head in. Kid’s had a rough day. I don’t want him to think we abandoned him.”

Sam nods in agreement and they file back inside, shoulders rounded, tension released. Inside the motel room, Jason sits on one of the beds, bundled in blankets, slack face illuminated by late night television. Sam watches his brother tiredly gather the boy up and take him to the bathroom for a shower. He doesn’t sleep that night. Not because he’s on the internet checking his sources for ways to break demon deals, but because he can’t stop thinking about a boy in loud colors running over rooftops fighting crime with lightning fast reflexes and snarky one-liners. It’s almost three in the morning when he hears whimpers cutting through his brother’s snores. He log-rolls off the bed he’s sharing with Dean, doing his best not to disrupt him, because Dean rarely sleeps enough as is, and goes to stand over the second full-size mattress. He watches Jason’s chest rise and fall. He memorizes the bruises on his skin. Finally he reaches out and hesitantly brushes back the hair at the boy’s temple. Jason turns his face into the touch and Sam sinks down on the bed sitting beside him, carding his fingers through thick curls until the soft cries fade off.

He feels no victory in solving this puzzle. He just feels sad. There’s something heinously wrong at seeing something so bright so courageous, a hero, reduced to this. Suddenly the weight of it all, of protecting something this fragile and needy (well maybe not fragile), seems overwhelming. He and Dean have screwed so many things up over the past few years. He only hopes this won’t be one of them. This can’t be one of them.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7

They leave the motel while it is still dark the next morning, desperate to get out of Dodge. They don’t even have a sit-down lunch at any of the road-side diners they pass, instead Dean opts to grab drive-thru and they pull over at a mostly empty rest area to eat at the picnic table furthest from the restrooms. It’s really too cold to be sitting outside comfortably Dean realizes, when Jason’s nose turns red and starts to run. He shrugs off his leather jacket and settles it over Jason’s shoulders. The sleeves are too long for him and ketchup ends up smeared over the cuff. Dean wipes it off with his napkin then flips it over and presses the clean side under Jason’s nose.

“Blow,” he orders.

Jason goes a little cross-eyed trying to look at the thing being shoved in his face but obeys. It’s cute. Until Dean realizes he’s holding a tissue full of someone else’s snot. Then it’s kind of gross. Blood, guts, vomit, he deals with all the time. It comes with the job. But snot… Ew. He tosses it in the nearest trash bin with the wrappings from their meal, careful not to let Jason leave his eye for a second. Not after what happened yesterday. It is a little disconcerting how the kid can slink around without them noticing. Stealth training he guesses.

Sam walks over to them from the vending machines juggling three paper cups with a big dumb grin on his face.

“There’s a coffee machine!” he announces triumphantly and pushes a cup into Dean’s hands.

Maybe not so dumb then.

“Haha. Yes!” Dean accepts his gladly, reveling in the warmth that starts seeping into his fingers, but smacks his brother lightly in the chest and scolds him, “No coffee for the kid, Sam. You’re gonna stunt his growth or something.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, “Okay, number one: you’ve been feeding him junk food non-stop so you really have no high ground here. Two: that’s a total myth. Coffee doesn’t stunt growth. Three: the machine makes hot chocolate too. So I got him one of those.”

Dean drops the hand, “Oh. Okay then. Well. Let it cool off a bit first so he doesn’t burn his tongue.”

“Wow. Bela was right. Settle down there Mama Bear,” Sam snickers and pulls back the plastic tab on the lid and sets the cup down to the side, small curls of steam rising from the hole.

Dean bristles superficially at the title but takes a sip from his own cup to hide the upward tug at the corner of his mouth. He’s been called a lot of things in his life, very few of them nice. This is one he can deal with. Almost.

“Papa bear,” he amends.

“Yeah sure,” Sam chuckles and sticks his finger into the hot chocolate. “Alright, I think it’ll be fine now,” he decrees and hands the cup to Jason.

Jason looks at it in his sleepy way and takes a sip. Dean and Sam watch him as he pulls back and licks his lips. There’s a spark of something in his eyes and then he dives back into the cup with a gusto that has them laughing.

“Well, I guess he likes that,” Dean observes drolly.

They toss the empties and pack Jason back into the car. Thirty minutes down the road they stop to piss. Then again a few hours later to tank up. The highway ride is monotonous and the only reason Dean isn’t bored out of his skull at the wheel is the edge of worry gnawing at him ever since Chicago. He doubts it's going to fade until the very moment they drive into Bobby’s lot. His fingers are too tight on the wheel and his legs and neck ache from the tension. The sun sets when they’re passing through Worthington and when they finally get to Bobby’s, it's as dark as when they set out that morning. Sam and Jason both nodded off an hour or so ago, but Sam begins to stir when Dean pulls off the main road onto the gravel drive. Jason remains dead to the world. Ha. Dead to the—yeah maybe not that funny.

Dean leaves the bags to Sam and hauls Jason up out of the backseat and carries him up the front steps to the porch. He’s in the middle of shifting his grip so he can reach for the door knob—kid’s put on some weight in the few days since they first picked him up, when the door swings open to greet them.

“Hey Bobby,” Dean grins at the older man over Jason’s shoulder.

Bobby stands in the doorway, one hand tucked in a pocket (no doubt ready to hurl salt or holy water) and one holding onto the collar of Rumsfeld, his massive Rottweiler.

“Looks like you got your hands full.”

“Yeah, out like a light.”

“I put clean sheets on the bed in the guest room,” Bobby gives a nod inside.

“Thanks,” Dean replies and makes his way in, Rumsfeld sniffing interestedly at Jason’s dangling toes.

With the kid held to his chest, Dean’s nose wrinkles. Kid needs a shower. Teenage boys and all that. Dean doesn’t want to wake him up though, not when he’s sleeping this soundly. He wasn’t surprised when Sam told him Jay was having nightmares, he’d heard the whines a few times himself, so the shower can wait until tomorrow. Dean tucks him in into what he’s always thought of as the green room, with its mint colored walls, then grabs a second blanket to spread over him. Bobby’s house is old and the central heating doesn’t always win out against the South Dakota chill.

He has to keep shouldering Rumsfeld aside. The dog seems intent on investigating the new-comer, putting his front paws up on the bed in an effort to snuffle at Jason’s ear.

“Leave him alone, ya menace,” Dean grumbles half-heartedly and pushes Rumsfeld out into the hall when the dog looks like he’s contemplating jumping onto the bed with the boy.

He’s less worried that Jason might go crazy and do something to the Rottweiler in the night (the vet bills after Meg had finished with him had been astronomical), than that the big dog would accidentally smother the teen while he sleeps. He ruffles Jason’s hair fondly before heading back downstairs to meet with Sam and Bobby. Rumsfeld whines at the door, clearly torn between standing guard outside of Jason’s room and following Dean. It’s endearing. There’s something to be said for animal instinct, and to have Rumsfeld’s instant approval sets Dean even more at ease with the decision to take Jason in. Rumsfeld gives the door one last whine and parting glance before following Dean in the hunt for Sam and his owner.

They find them in the kitchen kicking back beers. Sam’s leaned back against the counter while Bobby’s seated at the table peeling potatoes. Rumsfeld goes to sprawl out under the table, scrutinizing every flake of peel that hits the floor, then licking them up indiscriminately.

“What’cha doing there Bobby?”

Bobby expertly slices a long curl of skin from a potato, “Well, the kid’s had nothing but road food traveling with you two. Figured he might like a nice home cooked meal for a change. Got some bison in the freezer. Let it simmer all night and we’ll have a nice pot roast for lunch tomorrow.”

Dean’s mouth is already watering at the thought.

“You’re a good man, Bobby Singer,” he declares patting the man on the back and grabbing his own beer from the fridge.

“So, what’s the plan?”

Sam and Dean exchange a look. Dean shrugs.

“Not sure yet,” Dean admits, “That’s why we headed here. Need a place to regroup, and think for a bit. Any ideas?”

Bobby leans back and sighs heavily.

“One of these days you boys are going to have to start doing the thinking for yourselves.” He sets a potato to the side and picks up a new one. “Before anything else, he needs rest. Sleep, food, and a bath. Lord knows he could use some deodorant and clothes that actually fit. We can wait til tomorrow to break out the dead man’s blood and start burning sage. If he doesn’t ID positive as some kind of creature, I’d rather we wait til he doesn’t look like he’s about to shake apart before we try any rituals for possession or witchcraft. If he is under some kind of spell and we try and reverse it, in the shape he’s in there’s a good chance it’ll kill him. Again.”

Dean studies the lip of his bottle somberly. Sam’s mouth presses into a flat line.

“What about—you mentioned a psychic or something back in the hotel,” Sam prompts.

“Yeah, Pamela Barnes. Figured if Dean could talk with Jason through his dreams, she might be able to get inside his head as well. I called her before y’all got here, but she’s out of town at some big music festival out on the West Coast. Won’t be back til next week.”

Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Music festival? What is Yanni having a revival tour?” he snorts.

“Nah. Someone called the Misfits I think. Whoever that is,” Bobby grumbles and Dean blinks.

Aside from Missouri, all of the (fake) psychics he and Sam had run into were grandmotherly granola types that smelled like patchouli. He’s having a hard time reconciling his mental picture of one of them rocking out to one of the legends of horror punk. He can’t even really imagine Missouri rocking out that hard either, except maybe to Earth Wind & Fire. He shakes his head to dispel the tangential thread threatening to distract him.

“Okay. A week.” he nods idly, “Just one week. No big deal. Don’t have anywhere we gotta be, I guess. Seven days. Great.” He heaves a sigh. “Damn, I hate waiting. What are we going to do here for a week?”

The answer apparently, is research. Lots and lots of research. After breakfast the next morning, they sit Jason down on the middle of the living room floor where they’ve chalked a devil’s trap. It has no effect. Neither does the dead man’s blood or the sage or the revelation spell. As far as they can tell, Jason wasn’t resurrected as the result of any spell. Bobby picks up the candle, pendant, and herbs and stows them away in a roll top desk with an apologetic shrug. Sam growls and rubs his forehead in frustration before stalking off to the library.

“Well, thanks for the help anyways,” Dean offers the older hunter.

Bobby takes his hat off to scratch his thinning hair before pulling it back on.

“I’m just sorry nothing pinged. I really thought the revelation spell would at least point us towards a Druidic resurrection ritual or a witch’s seal or something.”

Rumsfeld whines and Bobby looks down at him.

“Oh, sorry boy,” he apologizes and drags his boot heel through one of the chalk lines.

With the trap effectively broken Rumsfeld blunders forward and bowls into Jason’s unsuspecting arms. Jason jerks back, blinking his wide blue-green eyes and Dean is about to haul Rumsfeld off the poor kid when the boy extends a curious hand and pats the dog between the ears. Rumsfeld flops into Jason’s lap and the tiniest sliver of a smile interrupts Jay’s perpetually blank features. Dean’s never been so jealous of a dog before.

Despite Sam and Bobby’s combined efforts, they don’t make much progress in digging up alternative theories for Jason’s resurrection. It has Sam almost tearing his hair out, and Dean pretends that has everything to do with wanting to help the kid rather than a way to bring him back if they can’t thwart his deal with the Crossroads demon. During the time they spend waiting for Pamela’s return however, they do start to learn Jason’s tics and triggers.

Dean starts keeping a list taped to the fridge after they find Jay screaming bloody murder curled up on the ground in the junkyard where Bobby had left a crowbar leaning against the rusted hull of an old Buick. Dean could kick himself for that one, because goddamn he’d been inside the kid’s head. He knew what had been done to him at the end of one of those things. They’re careful after that, to lock all of the tools in the shed as soon as they’re done using them. ‘Crowbar’ was the first to go on the list under the ‘bad’ column.

Immediately under this Dean adds clowns. They never actually test this one, but Dean preempts it by identifying and avoiding things he remembers from his African Dreamroot walkabout. Sam raises an eyebrow when Dean highlights and stars this one, in an attempt to convince Sam and Bobby that by ‘bad’ he actually means ‘completely catastrophic.’

“Trust me, Sammy. He’s got it worse than even you with those freaky fuckers,” he warns.

He can see Sam’s curiosity rise, but Dean doesn’t divulge more than that. If Jay ever recovers his mind, Dean doesn’t think he would appreciate him blabbing his greatest fears in intimate detail to everyone.

Chili dogs are the first to go under the ‘good’ column. Followed by a sequence of other foods. Kid sure does love to eat. Except for spam. That gets sorted under ‘bad’ after a particularly hellish day that ends with Dean standing on a chair trying to scrape remnants of lunch meat off the ceiling.

Cookies, to no one’s surprise quickly find their way onto the ‘good’ list. Dean is not sure what possesses Sam, but one night his younger brother decides it would be a good idea to bake homemade chocolate chip cookies. Something to do with, “avoiding all that hyper-processed enriched bleach flour and sugar substitute” crap. Incidentally, this is the same night they discover another of Jay’s phobias when Sam gets distracted reading a grimoire and doesn’t hear the oven timer go off.

Smoke gets added to the ‘bad’ column. While Sam frantically opens all of the windows and waves a cookie pan to dispel the smoke Bobby and Dean try to track him down. It takes them twenty minutes to find Jay hiding in the backseat of one of the scrap cars outside clutching Rumsfeld to him, and another ten to coax him out of it. Even then he refuses to go back into the kitchen for the rest of the night. They put a ban on Sam’s experimental baking and invest in buying Chewy Chips Ahoy in bulk.

Over the next few weeks, more things get added to the list. Cars go under ‘good.’ Jay likes to go for rides, fast with the windows down. It makes Dean laugh when he sticks his head out the window, breeze ruffling his hair like a dog. They often find him running his fingers tips over their metal contours. He especially seems to like shiny black muscle cars. Dean thinks Jay has good taste.

Books go under ‘good.’ He doesn’t read them or anything. But kind of like the cars, Jay likes to flip the pages back and forth, feeling the paper brush against his fingers.

Sam writes ‘Pretty Women’ under ‘good’ after their first shopping excursion. They stop by the grocery store on the way home from outfitting Jason with his own clothes that actually fit and Dean is trying decide between different brands of hamburger buns when he hears giggling. He turns and sees two young women by the napkins throwing surreptitious glances his way. They’re a little young, probably co-eds, but cute. He flashes them a grin and starts to raise his hand in a suave masculine wave when he realizes they aren’t looking at him, but past him to where Jay is standing. Any hope Dean had that his humiliation went unnoticed is wrecked when Sam waltzes by and snickers as he smugly tosses a bag of veggie chips into their cart.

Dean ends up marking off a square at the bottom corner of the list paper and labels it ‘sad.’ So far there’s only one word written inside: cereal. They haven’t quite figured out the why of that one yet.

They integrate him into their lives. It doesn’t happen smoothly, but Dean is surprised by how easily the brain dead boy fits into their adoptive family. Rumsfeld is his near constant companion. He walks around the house with one hand sunk into the thick fur of the dog’s ruff. In fact, when they go looking for Jason, they usually locate him by following the click of Rumsfeld’s nails since the boy moves with a spooky-silent tread.

He hovers nearby when Dean works on the Impala. And sometimes, sometimes, on the very best of days, if Dean yells for the box-end wrench—Jay will slide it to him under the car.

Bobby lets him help cook. Help might be a strong word. Mostly Jay sits on top of the counter, heels gently kicking against the cabinet doors, like it’s a ritual he’s used to as he watches Bobby scrape around inside silverware drawers and drop pats of butter into a hot skillet. Bobby affectionately calls him his official pot-stirrer. He does a good job. Their chili is never burned to the bottom of the pot on nights Bobby leaves the big wooden spoon in Jay’s hands.

Dean’s favorite moments though, are when he catches Jay and Sam together. On occasion he’ll find them on the old saggy couch in the living room with Jay leaned up against Sam, drooling a little bit on his shoulder while Sam researches. Sam gets into the habit of reading out loud to him, as if it’s a novel in his hands instead of some dusty ancient Zoastrian text from Bobby’s esoteric library. And in those instances, he’s selfishly thankful they found the poor dead kid. Not just for Jason’s sake, but because he hopes that taking care of Jason will keep Sam from going off the deep end once his contract runs out and he’s gone.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8

One week later and they are pulling up into the driveway of a pleasant house with decorative stained glass windows across from a playground. It’s not exactly the scene Sam was expecting from an owner who apparently likes to jet off to the West Coast for punk rock shows. The woman who opens the door helps bridge the gap in his expectations. She looks to be in her early thirties with glossy dark curls and a wide genuine smile, dressed in a Clash tank top. She’s gorgeous. Dean’s grin grows wolfish and Sam groans internally. Great, now he’s going to have to suffer through Dean’s heavy-handed flirtations while they’re here.

“Bobby!” she cries out in a throaty contralto and steps forward, grabbing the man into an enthusiastic hug.

The muscles in her shoulders and arms flex as she hefts him briefly off the ground. Sam raises his eyebrows, glance sliding over to Dean who wears a matching expression of impressed surprise. Sam makes a mental note not to piss her off. He doesn’t want to find out what it feels like to be on the receiving end of her impressive upper body strength. He can only hope his cruiser of a brother reaches the same conclusion. Though, it would be satisfying to see his brother get laid out by a chick without any demonic powers at least once…

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Bobby says once she’s set him down again.

The warmth and easy affection in his tone is startling. No growl of boys or idjits to be heard. There’s even a bit of smile showing through his beard. Sam wonders if the older man reserves his gruffness for him and Dean alone, or if it’s just pretty psychics that get a pass.

“So, these the boys?” she asks, taking a step back.

Bobby nods and introduces them, “Sam, Dean. This is Pamela Barnes, best damn psychic in the state.”

“Hi,” Sam raises his hand in an abbreviated wave.

Dean on the other hand, shoots her his best lady-killing smirk and bumps his chin up in that specific way that Sam finds particularly annoying, “Hey.”

In return Pam rakes her eyes up and down Dean’s body and hmms blatantly enough to have his brother choking on air. Sam snickers ruthlessly at his brother’s shock in having his own aggressive advances turned back on him. Oh, she is going to eat him alive.

“And who is this handsome devil?” she peers past them to where Jason stands.

Since his brother is still catching his breath, Sam loops an arm around Jason’s shoulders and ushers him forward.
"This is is Jason.”

Pamela studies him closely, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head to the side.

“Been through the veil and back again, huh?”

“You can see that?” Sam asks curiously.

Pam turns to him and nods, “I can see it on you too. Makes you a couple of rare individuals. Everyone, come on in.”

She steps back so they can file through the doorway into her home. Sam follows a half step behind Dean and Bobby. He shivers as he brushes past the psychic, wondering what gave it away. Does death linger on him like a sickly shadow? A vile cloud that clings to his soul? The reminder of his death and the deal Dean made to bring him back sparks that old aching guilt. He shepherds Jason through the kitchen, too subdued to enjoy the incongruity of the framed Sid Vicious poster over the mantle in an otherwise nicely furnished sitting room.

“So you hear anything?” Bobby asks.

Pamela raises one dark defined eyebrow.

“Well, you didn’t give me much to go off of. A fifteen year old boy, first name only, who died a year ago in Gotham? Do you have any idea how many people die in Gotham every year?” When no one answers she rolls her eyes and continues, “Anyway. I Ouija’d my way through a dozen spirits. No one had anything to say about a boy crossing back from the other side. Or how he might’ve done it.”

“Where does that leave us then?” Bobby folds one arm across his chest and slaps his thigh with the other.

“No worse off than you were before,” Pamela chides him, “I’d still like to see if I can talk with Jason himself. I’ve had some luck with catatonic patients in the past. It depends if he’s still in there. Sometimes the soul is gone, and what’s left is just a shell. In that case I may be able to contact the soul on the other side through a séance, but I can’t put it back in its body for you.”

“He’s still there,” Dean says in a rush.

It sounds more desperate than factual, the way witnesses to the supernatural hope repeating the words 'this isn’t real, I’m hallucinating' will make it so. Except, Sam’s seen it too. Jason’s too reactive to be completely absent. The flinches, the flash of a smile, the flicker of annoyance when Sam won’t let him flip the pages of the book he’s reading. There’s a driver behind the wheel. The driver may be deaf, dumb, and blind, but there’s someone there.

“I dreamwalked through his head when I had some African dreamroot,” Dean explains. “Things were a little—” he wiggles his fingers, “because it was a dream I guess, but he was definitely there. We talked. We talked about some weird shit. Some dude or thing. Sounded creepy enough to maybe be the kind of thing that brings people back from the dead.”

“Oooh, so a mystery monster?” Pam leans back against the table in the center of the room, shirt riding up to expose a sliver of skin. “That seems like a good place to start, tell me more.”

Dean licks his lips and is a second late in answering, “Uh. I was talking with Jay. Or well a version of Jay. And he asked if someone had sent me. A specific someone I mean, not just any rando. I asked who and he said: the one with flames in his mouth and ashes on his fingers. Jay didn’t like him. Told me he told the thing ‘no.’ I dunno what to, but then he asked if I was going to hurt him—Jason I mean. So whatever it is, I don’t think it’s good.”

They all stand silently for a moment, glancing between Jason and their shoes. Pamela claps her hands together.

“Well, first things first, before we even think about touching that icky with a ten foot pole, let’s see if I can make contact with Jason. Then maybe we can move onto clarifying some of that,” she says brightly, shaking them from their melancholy. “Like I said, I’ve had some luck with catatonia before. Brain damage can break that link between consciousness and body, keeping a person from being able to interact with the physical world. I want to knock on that noggin and see who’s home.”

She moves away from the table and takes Jason by the hand. Sam feels faintly apprehensive as she leads the docile boy out of arm’s reach to the divan by a window. He looks to Dean, but Dean seems more concerned with the curve of Pamela’s ass in her jeans as she sits, than Jason’s safety. Oddly, it puts Sam at ease. He’d thought Dean was overreacting to Bela’s discovery of Jason at first, but that was before they’d known who Jason really was, before Sam got used to tucking him into bed at night after he’d fallen asleep curled up with Rumsfeld on the living room floor. Now the idea makes him uneasy. How much would a Robin resurrected by eldritch means be worth? Grudgingly Sam has to admit Dean is better at reading people than he is. He had been right about Meg.

But he’s wrong about Ruby. She’s done nothing but help them.

Pamela arranges Jason so they face each other on the divan. She clears her throat, rubs the palms of her hands up and down her jean clad legs then settles them gently over Jason’s temples. For a long minute nothing happens except for the movement of Pamela’s eyes beneath their lids. Then she relaxes and breaks out into a smile.

“Well hey there handsome.”

After a beat she laughs, and Sam realizes she must be responding to Jason somehow. He perks up and leans forward in interest, and a little jealousy that a stranger is getting to talk with the boy he’s helped take care of for weeks now first.

“My name is Pamela. I’m a friend. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you so we can help you.”

The corners of her mouth turn down a fraction.

“Sorry baby, I don’t know who they are. Sam and Dean Winchester and Bobby Singer are the ones who brought you to me. Whoa-whoa, slow down there. I promise, they aren’t actually serial killers.”

Oh shit. He and Dean share a grimace. Sam had kind of forgotten they were wanted like that. Of course Jason would know at least their names, having been Robin. He bets Batman has them on some kind of list of criminals to keep a lookout for in his city.

“They may play at being bad boys but they’re good people. It’s just the job they do, is hard to explain. You’re from Gotham, right? Don’t you guys have like man-eating plants and giant crocodiles?” She snorts with unexpected amusement “Wow, you know, I’m scared to even ask what a man-bat is. Though the name seems pretty self-explanatory. Anyway, so you know better than most that monsters are real sometimes. Well, they hunt monsters, and you know how cops are – they don’t always get things right. Apparently they were banishing a vengeful ghost a few weeks ago when they found you and have been taking care of you ever since.”

Abruptly she cackles and slides one hand up to ruffle through his hair.

“No, they haven’t dressed you like a dweeb! Well, right now you’re in a Pink Floyd shirt, jeans, and converse – does that meet with your approval? Yeah, you like them? You’ve got good taste in music kid. I’ll let Dean know, pretty sure he’s the one that picked that out for you.”

Well I picked out the shoes, Sam thinks. He’d even gone ahead and bought a size up so they could fit sole-inserts in for comfort. It had been a good move in retrospect considering the rate Jason was growing. God, he hopes the kid ends up taller than Dean. Being the shortest would piss his brother off so much. Pamela’s hand drops down to resume its place at Jason’s temple and her features arrange into a more serious expression.

“I hate to bring things down, but we’ve got to get to business at some point. So, I have to ask to make sure we’re all on the same page: do you have any idea what’s going on?”

She tilts her head; listening to a voice only she can hear then shakes it softly.

“No, no, no handsome. You’re not dead,” she rushes to explain, “Well, not anymore. You were but now you’re a living breathing boy walking the world in a Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt. Whatever brought you back, didn’t heal you though. We think brain damage has severed the connection between your mind and body. That’s why they reached out to me, they thought I might be able to communicate with you better than their past attempts… Yeah. Dean tried to talk with you in your dreams. Do you remember him? No? Maybe? Hey, hey. It’s okay. That’s why I’m here now.”

Sam surreptitiously takes a glance at his brother and quickly looks away again. Dean looks so disappointed. He’d only raved about how awesome and brave the kid was for days after his dreamroot trip. Sam sidles up to his brother and gives his shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“What makes me so special?” Pamela tosses her hair back. “Oh we don’t have enough time for me to list all the reasons. But being psychic is in the top ten. Hahaha, no. Not that kind of psychic. I’m the real deal babycakes. The genuine article.” The jocular tone of her voice fades when she speaks again. “Speaking of Dean, he said in the dream that you mentioned someone. A man with flames in his mouth and ashes on his tongue?”

Jason gives an uncharacteristic full body shudder. Dean tries to take a step forward but Sam restrains him. It’s too early to end this. They need to get at least some answers first.

“I’m sorry Jason, but we think he had something to do with bringing you back. If we can figure out who it is and how they did it, it might help us get you back into the driver’s seat of your body. You want that don’t you? Okay. Start from the beginning and tell me everything you can—Yes! Like you’re giving a report. Just like that.”

Pamela stays quiet for a long time. The longest so far. The lines that edge her mouth and eyes grow tighter each minute. Every once in a while she nods tersely. Sam taps his foot to relieve his anxious energy, pushing down the temptation to interrupt and demand to know what Jason is saying. He’s been able to guess a lot of Jason’s half of the conversation from the context. He guesses Pamela has been choosing her words aloud with the intention of keeping them in the loop. This prolonged silence is making him nervous.

The lack of words makes him pay greater attention to their bodies and faces. Jason grows ever more fretful, his fingers twitch in his lap and tap at his thigh like they’re longing for a cigarette to roll between them. Pam’s smooth composure starts to break as well. She sweeps a thumb under Jason’s eyes and Sam notices the boy is crying. Pamela scoots closer to him and tucks his head under her neck, cradling him against her body as he sniffles wetly. Dean tries to move forward again but Pamela preternaturally opens one eye and gives him a warning glare until he backs off.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay Jason. I know you miss her. I’m sure she’s missing you too right now.”

Sam’s brow wrinkles. He turns to his brother, and mouths ‘who is she?’ but Dean shrugs, similarly flummoxed. Pamela’s hand strays up to pet Jason’s hair soothingly as she croons.

“She loves you so much, but Jason, she wouldn’t want you to come back to her that way. She’d want you to take this second chance and make the most of it. I know everything is scary and confusing right now, but it will get better. You’ve got a whole team of people here working to help you. You’ve been so strong; we just need you to keep holding on a little bit longer. Can you do that for me?” she asks, then kisses the top of his head, “Thank you Jason.”

She holds him until his trembling stops and his body goes slack. She opens her eyes and sighs, gives his back one last rub before ceding her spot to Dean. He darts forward, cocooning Jason in his arms and the familiar smell of worn leather and motor oil. Sam knows that scent well. He still finds it comforting after all these years.

“Is he okay? What the hell happened?” Dean asks sharply, all flirtation abandoned.

Pamela holds up a finger. She looses a long shaky breath and rakes her fingers through her hair. After another deep breath she looks up at them.

“I need a drink.”

She excuses herself from the room and reappears with a bottle of Jack Daniels and in one hand and four shot glass pinched between the fingers of the other. She passes the shot glasses out, keeping one for herself. She pours and downs a shot quickly before filling theirs and falling into one of the chairs around the table. Sam and Bobby join her while Dean stays with Jason on the divan, his green eyes skittering agitatedly around the room.

“Well, I’ve got to give you boys credit. That was infinitely more interesting that the usual, ‘Sorry Karen, Chip is having an affair, but don’t worry because I see a tall, dark, handsome stranger in your future,” Pamela admits with bewildered impressment. “So, you ready for this?”

Bobby takes his shot.

Dean mutters a surly, “No,” and follows suit.

Sam stares at the small glass in his hand and taps his fingertip against the rim.
“After dying, Jason said the last thing he remembered was being with his mom again. He said they were having a picnic in the park, he was reading her her favorite book, when everything froze and something approached him. He said it told him it was an angel, but it didn’t look like any angel he’d seen in a church window. Tall and dark, and not handsome. He said it was hard to look at directly but he got an impression of fire and what may have been wings.”

Sam runs through a mental catalog of every creepy-crawly they’ve ever gone against or heard of and comes up blank.

“Sounds like a friggin balrog,” Dean grumbles quietly from the couch.

“Did you just say a balrog?” Sam asks incredulously, “Like from Lord of the Rings?”

Dean’s brow pinches together.

“Yeah? I mean come on: wings, fire, darkness? Sounds like a balrog to me.”

Despite the seriousness of the moment Sam can’t help but crack a grin.

“I just—didn’t know you were into Tolkein and elves is all. I thought that’d be too nerdy for you.”

“It is for nerds. And I’m not into it. The movies are good is all. And that Arwen chick is hot,” Dean protests weakly.

“If we could take a break from how Dean gets off to pointy ears and back to the matter at hand,” Bobby interrupts irritably.

Sam chokes back snickers while Dean’s cheeks turn pink beneath his freckles. Beside him, Pamela clears her throat loudly. Loud enough Sam suspects it’s to cover her own chuckles.

“Anyway. It told your boy he was its chosen vessel. If Jason agreed to let it use his body, he’d bring Jason back to life and let him rejoin his family.”

“So he offered a deal?” Dean growls, “Sounds like lying demon scum to me.”

Sam frowns.

“Demons don’t need permission to posses someone,” he points out.

“Whatever it was,” Pamela interjects, “it gave Jason a bad feeling. He turned it down. Apparently that pissed it off. All he remembers after that is being in pain and everything’s been foggy since. He gets glimpses every now and then, but not often and never for very long.”
Dean stands and takes the last seat at the table so he can join the discussion without shouting across the room, though he keeps glancing back at Jason, as if he’s not convinced the boy isn’t on the precipice of another breakdown.

“Great,” he gripes, “So we still don’t know what this thing is or how it brought Jason back. Fantastic. Anyone have any ideas?”

Sam rolls his eyes.

“I have one, how about we start looking into angels?” he suggests.

His brother scoffs.

“It’s not an angel”

“Why not?” Sam challenges, “We know demons are real, why not angels?”

“Because aren’t they supposed to be guardians? Fluffy wings, halos—you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks who traumatize kids for not letting them wear them as a meat suit. Besides, don’t you think that if angels were real, that some hunter somewhere would have seen one… at some point… ever?”

“I got stacks of lore about em back home—Biblical, pre-Biblical. Some of it’s in damn cuneiform. Maybe no hunter in the past hundred years, but they sure seemed to have been a thing a few thousand years ago to leave so much literature behind,” Bobby puts his in his two-cents. “It’s at least a place to start.”

“Waste of time,” Dean utters under his breath.

“I could probably speed up the process a little bit,” Pamela offers, sounding bored.

She’s tilted back on her chair, the front two legs hovering off the floor. When they turn to her she lets it fall back into place with a crack.

“It gave Jason a name,” she explains, “Arioch.”

“Okay? And?”

“And with a name we could perform a séance.”

“You’re not gonna try and summon the damn thing here!” Bobby exclaims.

“No, no,” she assures him, “It would just give us a sneak peek at it. Like a crystal ball without the crystal.”

“I’m game,” Dean agrees instantly in his typical reckless fashion.

“No!” Sam practically shouts, startling everyone at the table, “Absolutely not.”

He doesn’t bother hiding his anger at Dean’s impetuousness. A séance may not bring the entity to sit at the table with them, but it still opens up a pathway it could potentially trace back to them. It’s one thing to endanger themselves, but Jason is completely helpless. How many people have been hurt or killed over the years after getting tangled up with them? Sam refuses to allow that to happen to Jason. It’s true their job doesn’t often grant them the luxury of going in fully prepared, too often they’re forced into making split decisions and rash actions – but it’s not like Jason is going to get any more brain damaged in the couple of days it will take them to Google Arioch and go through Bobby’s grimmoires. If they have the option to approach with caution they should take it.

“We don’t know what we’re dealing with. We have a name; we should research as much as possible first. See if we can’t figure out what this Arioch is before we put our noses up its ass! And when we know more, if you want to have a séance that’s fine, but we’re definitely not doing it with Jason here. It could put him in danger, and don’t you think we’ve upset him enough for one day?”

He points back at Jason who is gazing out the window where they left him. Although smooth now, his face is still red and blotchy and the tracks of tears haven’t completely evaporated off his skin yet. Dean at least has the decency to look shamed. Sam softens his voice when he speaks again.

“What… What was it that upset him so badly?” he asks Pamela.

The woman sighs and pours herself another shot. That’s enough to tell him it’s going to be bad. Sam looks down at his own shot glass, thus far untouched.

“He misses his mom,” she says simply, “He was a good kid. Where do you think he went when he died? He was in heaven with his mom and this thing rips him out, tosses him back into the earthly plane, and locks him up inside a busted body. He’s scared, he’s in pain, and he’s all alone. He wants what any kid would; he wants to be back with his mom.”

“Yeah, but if she’s in heaven that means she’s dead too right?” Dean asks.

Sam picks up his glass and rolls it between his fingers.

“Dean,” he tries to warn his brother away from that line of thought.

“The only way for him to rejoin her is if he died again and—” Dean’s rant comes to a sudden horrified halt.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut and swallows the liquor.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9

Dean lets Sam drive them home. He sits in the back seat with an arm around Jason, afraid to let go. Afraid Jason will suddenly lean for the handle and let himself tumble out the door into the road blank-faced. The Impala is a couple decades older than the invention of child locks, so he keeps the boy tucked against him, occasionally murmuring things like, “It’s gonna be alright. Me and Sam, we’re gonna fix this.”

They will. He’s not sure how yet, but they’ve gone up against the unknown before, and sure they haven’t always come out on top—but they’ve always come through. And now they’ve got a name, they’ve got a place to start. They can actually prepare before running in half-cocked. Of course, he winces, that’s usually his fault.

Some days he feels guilty for ever showing up at Sam’s door at Stanford and pulling him back into this life. Knowing that Yellow-Eyes would have likely killed Jess regardless doesn’t do much to ease the self-recrimination. But most days, he’s selfishly glad to have Sam at his side, a counter-balance to his impulsiveness. They make a good team.

He feels another stab of guilt knowing that he’ll be leaving him soon. Sam will be okay though. Sam has always been better than him at carving his own path. Always been stronger. He’ll hurt for a while, but he’ll be fine. He’ll at least be better off without Dean than Dean would be without him. And he won’t be completely alone.

Hopefully, they’ll get this thing with Arioch solved before Dean’s contract goes up and then Sam will have Jason. Jason will make a good teammate. With all his Robin training, Dean’s sure the kid could make a kickass hunter.

Not that he wants that for the kid... Or either of them, really. The family business should die out with him. Good on them if they can figure out what something normal and happy looks like. Dean never could. Jason seems to like cars though… Maybe he could help Bobby out at the yard or something. Would that kind of life be enough for him? Or will he hare straight back to Gotham as soon as he’s back in his proper mind?

As Dean sinks deeper into the leather seats and his thoughts, he wishes he had taken one final shot of Jack for the road.

***

It was supposed to get easier, now that they have a clue. But after three days of research the tension is just mounting. What they’ve found corroborates what Jason told Pamela. Arioch is listed in one of Bobby’s grimmoires as a bat-winged demon of vengeance. In Jewish lore, he’s a guardian angel of the line of Enoch. John Milton bridges the gap between the two in Paradise Lost, describing Arioch as a fallen angel, thrown out alongside Lucifer during the war in heaven.

Dean still isn’t sure that he buys the angel bit. It’s more likely the thing is just a jumped-up demon with delusions of grandeur. He thinks they should go back to Pamela’s, get another glimpse of that little back tattoo, hold a séance and if all goes well, summon the damn thing and shoot it with the Colt. Sam is less on board. In fact it feels like Sam’s not really on board with any plan and it’s starting to piss him off.

Sam has been making bitchface #34 all through dinner, glaring at the tatertots topping his helping of hotdish and pushing the last few around his plate with his fork. Dean shares a look with Bobby and the older man rolls his eyes, breathes out noisily and stands up with his plate.

“C’mon boy,” he says laying a hand on Jason’s shoulder, “Dishes ain’t gonna clean themselves. I’ll wash, you dry.”

Jay tilts his head up uncomprehendingly, but allows himself to be prodded out of his chair. Bobby stands him beside the sink and puts a cloth in his hands. That must trigger some sort of muscle memory because once he feels it between his fingers, he takes up his station next to Bobby. Dean waits until the water is running. It’s not loud enough to drown out the conversation he’s about to force completely, but it should at least soften the sharper edges. He sets his beer bottle down on the table with a clink.

“Okay, so what crawled up your butt and died?”

“What?” Sam blinks and frowns.

“You’ve been an irritable asshole for the last two days. You’ve shut down every plan I’ve put forward. Which, if you have any better ideas, I’m willing to listen. But I’m getting real tired of putting up with your shit attitude with no explanation. So whatever’s lodged up that sphincter of yours – pull it out and let’s get it over with.”

Sam’s frown deepens.

“I haven’t—”

Dean groans and rolls his head up to stare at the ceiling.

“Sam, I’ve know you your whole life. I know when something’s bothering you.”

Sam huffs and opens his mouth, “I just—” His eyes flick to where Jason is standing with Bobby, carefully drying a pan with slow deliberate motions. He lowers his voice. “You know I care about Jason.”

“Yeah.” Dean agrees reluctantly, afraid of the ‘but’ hiding down the road.

“But, I feel like we’re wasting time on this.”

“Wasting—!” Dean shouts, then grinds his teeth together and hisses, “Since when is helping someone wasting time? Helping people is what we do, Sam. Why is it wasting time when it’s on him and not every other sucker we’ve saved?”

Sam leans back in his chair and sucks in his cheeks. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything. Because I knew you’d react like this.”

“Like what? Like I’ve got a goddamn heart!”

“For how much longer, huh?” Sam pushes back. “Dean, I love Jay. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a little brother. And I will do whatever I can to help him. But can we please try and save you first?” His voice cracks and he looks away quickly, arms crossed over his chest.

At 6 foot 4 inches tall, Sam will never look small, but he does his best in this moment, curling in on himself. All of the righteous anger burns out of Dean and leaves him hollow. He sighs and gets up from the table. He doesn’t want an audience for this conversation.

There’s a small pie tin in the fridge with a slice of apple pie from Millie’s Diner just outside of town. He grabs it and two clean forks and knocks his elbow into Sam on his way to the front porch. He’s just sat down on the front step when he hears the creak of the screen door open and close again behind him. Wordlessly he holds out the second fork. Sam takes it and sits next to him. Dean pulls back the crimped foil edges and pulls off the lid.

He takes a bite and enjoys the perfect blend of tart and sweet and spice on his tongue, even if the crust has gone a little soggy. He’s going to miss apple pie. He takes his time chewing, but it still hurts when he swallows, throat gone tight.

“Sam. Look.” He stops and takes a breath before starting again. “I want to believe so badly that there is a way outta this. I mean I'm staring down the barrel at this thing. You know, Hell. For real, forever, and I just...”

“Yeah.”

“I’m scared Sam. I’m really scared. And it’s not that I want to die. But—” He drops his fork into the tin, heat building behind his eyes. “It’s been months and we haven’t found anything and every time we turn up buttkis it reminds me of how fucked I am. I’d rather spend my last days thinking about how to save one last person than being terrified all the time. If I have to go, I at least want to knowing that I did my best by him that you both are going to be okay.”

Sam takes an audible breath.

“I get it. I do. But Jason’s not approaching a deadline and you are. And wouldn’t you rather know he’s okay, because you’re here watching him as he grows up?”

Dean digs the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and grinds them down until he sees starbursts. He wants that. He wants what Sam is describing so strongly, but he doesn’t like false hope.

“Please?” Sam says softly and leans into his side.

Dean drags his hands down his face and picks up his fork again, sniffling. He spears a bite of pie and shoves it in his mouth.

“Okay. So what do you have in mind?” he asks as he chews.

“Do you remember the name Doc Benton?”

“Sounds familiar. Should I?”

“From when you were a kid… From Dad. Doc Benton, real-life doctor, lived in New Hampshire, brilliant and obsessed with alchemy, especially how to live forever. So in 1816, Doc abandons his practice and—”

“Right, yeah,” Dean adds in as the information starts to pull at threads of his memory, “Nobody hears from him for like twenty years, and all of the sudden, people start showing up dead.”

“Dead or missing an organ or their hand or some other kind of part.”

“ ‘Cause whatever he was doing was actually working. He just kept on ticking. Parts would wear out, he’d replace them.” Dean remembers now. But there’s a small problem. “But I thought Dad hunted him down and took his heart out?”

A small smile tugs at Sam’s lips. “I think the Doc must have plugged in a new one, because guess what’s been popping up in the paper again?”

Sam hands him his phone, it’s open to a story out of New Hampshire. He taps on the screen as he summarizes the article for Dean.

“One guy got his kidney stolen, is in the hospital. Another had his liver removed. He didn’t make it.”

“Okay. So he’s back on the hunt. So what?” Dean grimaces.

Sam’s knee starts bouncing. “You have to die before you go to hell, right? And Benton can’t die. We find out how he does it, we can do it to you.”

“Wait, wait, wait a second. You want don’t want to chase down Slicey McHackey and take him out… You want to buy him a freaking beer and study him?!”

Sam’s shoulders are too strained for it to be a shrug. “…Yes?” His voice lilts up hopefully at the end and the whole thing is so ridiculous Dean can’t help but tuck his chin into his chest and snort.

“Oh my god, Sammy. When did you get to be crazier than me? You get that this is batshit crazy right?”

“You’ve only got three weeks left. Maybe now is the time to do something batshit crazy. So?”

“So?” Dean echoes back.

“What do you think? Check it out?”

Dean sighs and scrubs a hand through his short cropped hair. “You forget that if I welch on this deal, you die again. I’ve got a feeling that living forever is going to be considered welching.”

“Fine! Then whatever the magic pill is, I’ll take it too!” Sam counters.

“Oh what is this, Sid and Nancy? I don’t know. We still have the Colt," he reminds Sam. The 1835 revolver made by Samuel Colt himself on the night Haley's Comet passed over, the same night all those men died at the Alamo. The gun made with sanctified steel and blessed bullets engraved with sigils. The gun rumored to be able to kill anything. "I think our best shot is killing the demon who owns my contract and this whole damn thing should wipe clean.”

“And how are we going to find out who that is? We have no idea who holds the ticket, Dean.”

Dean deflates. “I just want to go on the record and state that I don’t think this is a great option. It sounds like whatever Doc Benton does requires murdering a whole bunch of folks, unless that part is just for kicks. But… You really want to do this?”

Sam looks forlornly down his long long legs. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Can we at least just give it a look? If it doesn’t work out, then we can take him down just like it’s any other hunt but… Dean, I’ll never forgive myself if… if you go and I know that I didn’t do everything I could to stop it. I have to do this. Please?”

Dean purses his lips together. He picks up the pie tin and fork again. He taps the tines against the tin.

“Sure,” he caves, feeling the beginnings of a headache start to build behind his eyes.

***

They pack up the next morning and head out while the sun is still fresh on the horizon, not warm enough yet to burn off the dew clinging to everything. Dean knows he’s starting to annoy Sam, but he keeps finding reasons to linger.

“Okay, so his pack of cigarettes are in the nightstand in my room,” he tells Bobby. “If he starts getting really antsy, let him have one. But of course, watch him. Don’t let him actually light it or anything. It just calms him down having something in his hands. I don’t think he’s got any lighters stashed away, but he’s more resourceful than you would think,”

He stops on the front steps and turns back around, duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

“Oh! And no scary shit on the TV, and he’s got a limit of two cookies after dinner, okay? Don’t let him con you into giving him any more than that.”

Bobby shoves him, making him stumble down the last few steps.

“For chrissakes Dean. I know what I’m doing. I raised you two idjits just fine and it ain’t exactly like kid’s not already been living here the last couple months. We’ll be fine.”

Dean straightens up and glares back at him. Sam sighs and claps Bobby on the shoulder.

“Thank you Bobby, we appreciate it. Really,” he soothes the older man then follows his brother, pushing him towards the car. “C’mon Dean, let’s hit the road.”

Dean tosses his duffle in the trunk then rounds the car to the driver’s side door. He raises two fingers.

“Two cookies!” he gives his final warning before sliding into the seat.

Sam climbs in after him. Dean turns the key and they sit in the idling car for a moment before Sam growls warningly, “Dean.”

Dean huffs and pulls away from the house. He watches as Jason and Bobby, with his arm slung over the kid’s shoulders, grow smaller and smaller in the side mirror until the driveway turns and they’re lost to sight behind the stacks of old cars. Dean turns on the radio and they take turns singing along and hashing out the case.

With the wind in his hair and Sam’s droning, he can almost pretend this is just another case. That they’re not in a desperate rush to cobble something together to save him. He doesn’t think this is going to help. Dean’s not a stranger to killing, but he doesn’t kill humans. At least not innocent ones, and he’s not going to start if that’s what Doc Benton’s formula requires. He mostly agreed just to pacify Sam, maybe get one last good hunt in together before the end.

Chapter Text

It's a fucking bust. They save a woman. He manages to avoid getting his eyes scooped out of his skull, but it's still a bust as far as Sam is concerned. It wasn't black magic or blood sacrifice, just science. Very weird, very fucked up science that required a steady stream of fresh healthy organs. And in his brother's eyes it was tantamount to blood sacrifice. They'd fought about it.

'What he is, isn't living! Look, this is simple. Black or white; human or not human. He isn't human—he's a freaking monster! I can't do it. I would rather go to hell!’ Dean had screamed, gesturing to the Frankenstein mishmash of body parts that made up Doc Benton.

So they'd buried the doctor along with his secret formula and hit the road. They hadn't even made it out of Pennsylvania before Dean's phone was ringing. Sam wishes he had never answered it. Maybe if the disappointment from the Doc Benton case hadn't been so fresh, he would have been able to talk Dean out of the wild goose chase to Ohio spurred by their deceased father's voice, promising the name of the demon holding Dean's contract. At the end of the line there was no demon, no name, no John Winchester— just a Crocotta, a soul-sucking Indian beast of mimicry, luring people to their deaths through the telephone wires. All they've done is waste another week.

Rather go to hell. Sam squeezes his eyes shut and rubs at the bridge of his nose trying to massage away the tension headache forming. Dean's damnation was growing more probable by the minute. Two weeks. That's all they have left. In two weeks Dean is going to hell and they only thing they can do is hope the rumors about the Colt are true and that whatever comes for Dean can be shot between the eyes.

It's silent in the car. They're both too tired, too downtrodden to turn on the radio and pretend everything will be fine if they sing loud enough to 80's hair metal. In the stillness he can hear the creak of the steering wheel under Dean's grip. Dean's phone goes off, it's loud monophonic ring cutting through the white noise of tires on asphalt. They startle and Sam puts one hand on the wheel so Dean can dig the phone out of his jacket pocket. 

"Hello?" Dean answers. "Hey Bobby. No. Crocotta. Yup. We got him. No. Headed back to the hotel now. Yeah. Hit the road at sun up, back tomorrow." The string of monosyllabic replies belie his brother's exhaustion. Sam expects him to hang up at any second, but then his brother's voice gentles. Sam sits up a little straighter from where he's slouched against the window. The blue glare of the cell phone illuminates his brother's profile and highlights the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, sure. Put him on... Hey Jay. Just wanted to let you know we've wrapped up here and will be heading home soon. Kicked some ass, saved some people. Gonna grab some Z's but we should be home in time for dinner tomorrow. Hope you haven't been giving Bobby too much shit. And if you think I'm not gonna take an inventory of how many cookies are left when I get back—I'm gonna know if he's been giving you more than two a night then you'll both be in trouble, yeah? Anyway. I know you aren't gonna say anything back. That's okay. Just wanted you to know that me and Sam will be home soon and we can't wait to see you. Okay?" Dean snaps his fingers in Sam's face. "Want to say anything?" he whispers.

Sam huffs fondly. "Sure."

"I'm handing Sam the phone now, okay? He wants to say goodnight too. Bye kiddo!"

Sam takes the phone and holds it up to his ears. Very faintly he can hear the sound of breathing from the other end.

"Hey Jason. Dean pretty much covered everything so I won't bore you. Missed you, see you soon. Give Rosie a belly rub for me. Goodnight."

He ends the call and drops the phone into the empty built-in ashtray. Just like that the frustrated antagonism that's been plaguing them melts away.

"What'd Bobby say?" he asks, "Is Jason doing good?"

Dean shrugs, his shoulders relaxing as they roll down.

"Bobby says he's missing us. Spends most of the time sitting on the porch with Rosie. Climbed onto the roof yesterday though. Nearly gave Bobby a heart-attack."

"Well, as long as he doesn't try to jump off it..."

Dean grins. "Twenty bucks a week from now he'll be doing backflips off it."

"And sticking a perfect landing in the front lawn?" Sam snorts. "No thanks, I know a losing bet when I hear one."

They pull into the hotel lot, washed in grimy light from bug-filled street lamps, and shoulder their bags. He blames it on the exhaustion of running back to back cases that he doesn't immediately notice the guest in their room. He stumbles into Dean's back, pulling up short at the figure seated neatly on the nearest bed. Her ankles are crossed elegantly as she levels a gun at their heads. The glock looks bulky in her hands, but they don't shake. He has no doubt she knows how to use it. Their bags thud to the floor.

"What the hell do you want Bela?" Dean growls, so deeply and ferociously Sam can actually feel it where his chest brushes his brother's back. 

She doesn't smile or tease, or bother with any of the insincere flatteries she usually likes to bestow on them. A cold sweat prickles between his shoulder blades.

"The Colt." When neither of them move she clicks off the safety. "Now, please," she sneers.

"You've got to be out of your goddamn mind," Dean snarls.

"Put your hands above your heads. Sam, step away from your brother. Good. Now slide your bags to me. One at a time. Sam first. Slowly."

Sam complies. He does his best, but it's awkward. The floor is carpeted and the bottom of his duffle bag bunches as he tries to push it towards her. As soon as it's in her reach, Bela snags it with the hell of her foot and kicks it under the bed behind her.

"Now you," she nods at Dean.

"Fuck you, bitch."

Bela rolls her eyes, "Believe it or not, this is the lesser of two evils."

"Believe you?" Dean scoffs, "What is this, comedy night at the Apollo?"

"The other option is your precious little foundling," she spits, "Now give me the damn bag unless you'd rather part with him."

"What?"

"I'd prefer the Colt, but I'll do whatever I have to do. It's your choice."

For a second, Dean doesn't move. Sam can only imagine he's frozen in shock, because he knows Dean wouldn't hesitate otherwise. He never hesitates when innocents are in danger. Sam isn't sure what he'd do faced with the same ultimatum. He'd sacrifice his life in a heartbeat for Dean or Jason, but being forced to choose between the two? Because that's what this is; giving up the Colt is essentially giving up on Dean. It's their only hope against the demon who holds his contract.

Dean pushes his bag forward. Bela leans forward this time, grabbing it and pulling it up onto the bed beside her so she can rifle through it single-handedly. The normal Bela would make some joke at Dean's expense as she sifts through his clothes and underwear. This deadly-earnest Bela is as novel as it is disturbing. Her eyes glint darkly as she finally withdraws her hand from the bag, the Colt within her grasp. She tucks the pistol into a messenger bag at her hip, then she stands. She points to the bathroom suite, her lips thinned into the facsimile of a smile.

"Thank you, boys. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think we'll all be happier once we've put this behind us. I'll be gone as soon as I hear that door lock behind you."

Sam glances at Dean, then back to Bela.

"Bela, please," he tries, "We need the Colt. It's not just some hunting tool. We need it. Dean—"

"Do you really think you're the only ones who needs it?" Bela cuts him off harshly. "I'm not doing this because I want to. No matter how much fun it is screwing you two over."

He opens his mouth to entreat her again when his arm is grabbed and Dean herds him towards the bathroom, putting himself between Sam and the gun.

"Bela," Dean's voice is low with restrained anger. "We're not fighting you, okay? Look, we're going to the bathroom and we're gonna lock the door behind us just like you asked. But before we do, answer one question for me."

Bela snorts, "I don't think you understand how negotiations go, Dean. I'm the one holding the gun, I don't have to answer anything."

"But you will, because you owe us. You know you do. We could have made this way harder than this, but we're letting you take the Colt."

Sam is impressed by his brother's forced calm.

"I don't owe you anything!" she hisses. "By my count I saved your lives last."

"Fine. Have it your way. You saved us. You're a pain in the ass, but you're not evil. Threatening a kid who can't even take care of himself, that's evil. Tell me what you meant when you said Jason was option B."

Bela's mouth puckers unattractively.

"If this works, then you'll never need to know."

"Bela!" the placating tone vanishes from Dean's voice and he takes a step towards her. 

The gunshot is deafening. Sam yanks Dean backwards by his jacket. The older man flails and collapses into the shower stall. Sam slams the bathroom door shut, lock it, then dashes to his brother's side. He doesn't see any stains blooming across the fabric of Dean's shirt, but he yanks up the cloth to be sure. Dean slaps his hands away.

"I'm fine! I'm fine, goddamnit. She didn't hit me."

"Well, she was too damn close to miss!" Sam yells. "What the hell, Dean?"

"Warning shot," Dean groans, waving his hands at the shattered floor tiles. "She was never going to actually try to kill me. Shit." He sits up and crawls out of the tub. "She's getting away!"

They fumble over each other in a race to get out of the bathroom and suite, but by the time they reach the Impala, there's only a distant pair of red taillights disappearing into the darkness. Dean nearly rips the door of its hinges launching into the driver's seat and Sam barely has time to duck back in the room to grab their bags before Dean takes off without him. Dean crushes the accelerator to the floor but after thirty minutes of flagrantly ignoring any and all traffic laws, they still haven't caught up. Reluctantly, Sam reaches over and taps the white knuckled fingers clutching the steering wheel.

"Dean. She's gone. We don't know if she turned off down a side road, or if this is even the direction she went. Those tail lights might not have been hers," he rationalizes as sympathetically as he can.

Dean grits his teeth. "We can't just... give up, Sammy. She has the Colt. She threatened Jason."

"I know. I know. And we'll catch her and we'll get it back. But not tonight. You're more likely to get us killed going a hundred and fifty out here in the middle of the night than finding her. So let's go home and make sure Jay and Bobby are safe. Then we'll regroup and come up with a plan."

Dean's fingers flex on the wheel then ease. Sam nearly sighs in relief when he drops them to a lower gear and pulls off onto the side of the road. The hisses and clicks of the cooling engine eventually fade to be replaced with an Arcadian chorus of crickets and tree frogs. Dean bares his teeth, lips curling back over enamel in a silent feral snarl. He slams his fist on the dashboard.

"Damn! Fuck!"

Sam waits out his tantrum with a patience he doesn't actually feel. Sure, Bela had called Jason 'Plan B,' but what if that changed? What was to stop her from snatching Jason up as well, in case her plans for the Colt fell through? What were her plans for the Colt? She said she needed it, that sounded like more than just procuring an item for a client. Was she in trouble with demons as well? He just couldn't understand where Jason fell into things. What made him a back-up? Yeah, he can beat the shit out of a couple of assholes, but he can't kill demons! Can he? God, this was a mess. No, it's more likely Bela's being threatened or blackmailed. She's scared of something, and the idea that whoever has her this frightened may know about Jason and is looking for him, churns his gut.

Dean's fuming gasps peter out. He scrubs a hand through his short hair and turns to Sam.

"So. Where are we? And what's the quickest route back?" he asks thickly.

Sam pulls the atlas out of the glove compartment. He flips through the states and past major cities, traces the blue and red lines of interstates and highways until he finds the exit the motel was off. He thinks they went south out of the parking lot? Yeah, south. They need to be going west. 

"Okay, uh. We'll want to turn around and instead of going all the way back to the motel... Looks like about five miles back we crossed route 12. If we turn onto route 12, that will take us back to 90."

Dean nods and starts the engine. He pulls a u-turn in the middle of the secluded road and once more they hurtle through the inky night. They're still traveling faster than is safe or legal, but it's not the break-neck pace of before. A phone lands in Sam's lap.

"Call Bobby. Let him know what happened. Tell them there's been a change of plans and we're on the way. And to put the house in lockdown."

Normally, he'd resent the curt orders but there's no time for hurt feelings. He dials Bobby. Every shrill ring sets his teeth on edge. His heart throbs painfully in his chest until finally, there's a clattering and a string of curses on the other end.

"Wha' in the hell you callin' me this late for?"

"Bobby, it's  Sam."

"Boy. You better have a damn good reason for this. Y'got any idea what hour it is?"

He doesn't.

"We had a run-in with Bela."

"Shit. What now?"

"She took the Colt."

"WHAT? The hell did you idjits—"

Sam raises his voice to be heard over the tirade, "Bobby, that's not why I'm calling."

"Dear lord, are you telling me that's not the worst of it?"

"She threatened Jason! Okay? We're on our way back right now. We'll be there in," he pauses to do the calculation in his head, "eight hours. You've got to keep him safe until then. Don't let him out of your sight. Call us if you hear anything or see anything. Okay, please?"

"...That bitch."

Sam chokes on a laugh, "Yeah."

"Alright. I'll put everything on lockdown. Don't you worry about us. Kid'll be safer than a gold bar at Fort Knox. Drive safe, okay? Don't let Dean put you in a ditch," the old man grumbles.

"We will. Thank you, Bobby. See you soon."

They drive through the night, only stopping for gas and coffee that's so burnt it tastes like gas. Dawn softens the bleak South Dakota skyline, but the rising sun does nothing to soothe their growing anxiety. He can't stop bouncing his heel on the floorboards, Dean taps his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel. 

When Bobby's junkyard appears on the horizon, Sam instantly starts scanning the property for any hint of disturbance. It's an exercise in futility with the disorganized piles of mufflers and stacks of crushed cars. Was that rusted out cab upside down like that when they left? But Bobby never called, and as they get closer to the house, all the doors and windows are intact and closed. Dean bolts up the steps as soon as he throws the car into park. Same follows after retrieving a sawed-off from the trunk.

"Bobby! Bobby!" Dean pounds on the door. 

Sam watches the windows for any flicker of movement. Dean raises his hand to knock again and the door swings open.

"Quit yer hollerin', you loon. You're gonna upset the kid. Everything's fine. Now get your asses inside," Bobby grouches. "Brats," he mutters under his breath as they follow him inside, "thinkin' I can't hold down the fort for one damn night. Like I ain't been doing this for longer than they've been out of diapers."

"Where's Jay?"

"In the library," Bobby points down the hall, "With Rosie."

Dean rushes ahead. Sam lingers behind, waiting for Bobby to re-lock and re-seal the wards around the front door.

"He been like this this whole time?" Bobby asks.

"Just about."

Bobby sighs and they walk down the hall together, old wooden floorboards creaking beneath their feet. Sam stops in the doorway and watches as Dean sweeps Jay into a hug. Jay startles at the unexpected contact, but swiftly sinks into the touch, turning his face into the worn leather of Dean's jacket and inhaling. The kid almost looks happy. 

"Anything happen?" Sam asks in a hushed tone.

"Nah. Everything's been quiet here. Are you sure Bela wasn't just yanking yer chain? You know how she likes to wind your brother up."

Sam shakes his head. 

"No. She was too... specific. Said he was her plan B if she couldn't have the Colt."

"Huh."

"And she was serious too. Not like herself." He frowns. "I think she may be in some kind of trouble."

Bobby scoffs. "No doubt of her own making."

"No doubt," Sam whispers, "Let's just hope it's not our undoing."