Episode Twenty: Altered

By : BurstynOut

Part Three

Sam’s feet backpedaled madly. The sheets twisted around his flailing limbs as he pushed himself into a seated position and back into the headboard with a resounding thud of cranium against particle board and veneer. It was a damned good thing he didn’t have a concussion. Beating one’s skull against a wall was not recommended treatment for head injuries.

But crap, something wasn’t right. Blood dripped from his nostrils and onto the screen of the phone in his hand. It was almost black in silhouette against the illumination that emanated from within the device, despite the fact that Dean had clearly said the battery was dead. Not that it mattered, considering he was hearing his father’s voice when there was no signal.

“What the…?” Sam clapped a hand over his nose, trying to staunch the flow, and did another internal somersault as the phone vibrated in his hand. Heart thudding in his chest, he dropped the device onto the comforter, between his splayed legs. It landed half folded in on itself and clicked off with a tone as it snapped shut the rest of the way. True to form, the phone didn’t seem to care that it was switched off, as the light from the screen intensified and flared out from the crack between the halves of the hinges. After a few more rings, the vibrations stopped, and the phone looked almost too hot to touch.

Sam struggled to breathe through his mouth as the blood in his nose flowed more freely, despite the hand that was attempting to slow it. He could barely hear over the pounding in his ears, and the magnified sound of his own breathing as it echoed off of his closed fist. He almost missed, then, when the sounds of music emanated from the now-still phone. Not just any music, however. It was Invisible Man, by Queen, the same song that had been playing in the video Sam had received in the bar that night. The song that had been playing when Dean…

Alea Iacta est, Samuel

Sam, your brother…he’s not himself. He’s different…He’s not to be trusted.

Your brother is coming to get you at school.

Dad, I haven’t been in school for over a year.

The phone was still on the bed before him, but the vibrations of the music, the hiss of Freddie Mercury’s voice as his tongue slipped over the ‘sss’ of “invisible,” followed by the punctuating clash of the band after “man,” sliced through his skull. Somewhere behind his eyes, the music played like the strains of a movie soundtrack inside tinny, worn-out speakers. Each note opened a capillary in his sinuses and sent a fresh sluice of blood down his nasal passages. He bent forward in an effort to keep from choking as the fluid ran down his throat.

I’m the invisible man…

DAH!

I’m the invisible man…

DAH!

“Ahhh!” Sam put his free hand on the bridge of his nose. The space between his eyes pulsed as though the entire Queen ensemble had set up an amphitheatre at the crown of his brow. His eyes throbbed in their sockets, throat constricting around the heme-coated mist that tried miserably to pass for air.

The situation escalated from disturbing and inconvenient to threatening in the space of less than a minute. There was no doubt, as his head threatened to detach from his shoulders, that he wasn’t picking up stray signals, or recovering lost messages on a screwed up receiver. Something was definitely trying to get through to him, and if he didn’t answer the phone, it’d just drop a party line directly to his head.

Yielding, Sam picked up the phone, a shock like static on cold steel tingling through his arm, and he flipped it open. He was momentarily blinded by the intensity of the light coming from the display and cringed. He threw his arm across his face, ignoring the blood in favor of saving his eyesight, and squinted down at the device. After a few seconds, enough time for the blood to paint his shirtfront like the bib of a baby eating Spaghetti-O’s, the glare dimmed and Sam could actually make out shapes on the display.

It was a scene he recognized immediately. The tiny cabin they’d shared after reuniting on the eve of Elkins’ death came sharply into focus. Sam had no trouble recognizing himself, though the angle was obviously shifted from his original perspective. He and his father looked up simultaneously as the door opened. Sam remembered how much of a relief it had been to see Dean return. As good as it had been to reconnect with his father that night, he’d never understood why it was necessary for Dean to go to the funeral home alone. They were a team, or at least they’d become a good semblance of one in the year since their reunion, and Sam hadn’t liked the idea of Dean taking on the assignment alone.

It was the first time he’d wondered how many such assignments Dean had undertaken while Sam was away, but not the first time he’d worried. He’d always worried. But then, Jess had been there to smooth the wrinkles on his brow and remind him that there were others in the world who needed him too, others who were more helpless than Dean.

Sam squinted at the phone in bewilderment. He remembered that night, remembered it clearly. It was the first time he and his dad had talked, really talked in years. That wasn’t something he could ever just forget. It was etched in his mind like handprints in concrete, eternal and fast. There was no logical explanation, as far as Sam could tell, for why someone or something would want him to see this again. What had he missed?

Alea iacta est, Samuel.

The die is cast. When?

Sam’s grip tightened on the phone, and he raised it closer to his eyes. When? All the video clips had been old. The call from his father had stated that Dean was coming, as though he and Sam hadn’t been reunited for over a year. And now, the vampire hunt in Colorado. Whatever he was supposed to see, it wasn’t something that was going to happen, not anything like the visions that usually plagued him. This was about something that had already happened.

The memory of Dean brokenbleedingmangleddying in the crushed frame of the Impala that he’d seen in the bar the night before came crashing through the static in his head.

Alea iacta est, Samuel.

Sam shook off the memory. No, anything but that.

The figures on the phone’s screen moved just as Sam remembered them, Dean strolling in confidently and setting the jar on the heavy table with a clunk and a scrape. Something was different, though. From his new perspective, the wider angle let Sam’s eyes pick up a subtle stiffness that he’d missed that night. Dean held his arm closer to his body and tugged at the sleeve of his shirt uncertainly when he thought no one was looking. Was there a hint of a white bandage peeking from the buttonholes?

“Dead man’s blood,” John said, and Dean nodded. There was something different about John, too. The way he looked at Dean, not anything like the father who regretted spending his college fund on ammunition that Sam had been talking to only minutes prior. This John looked at Dean the way he’d looked at him earlier that day.

I’d have never given you the damned thing if I’d known you were gonna ruin it.

Sam’s stomach roiled as the moment came flooding back to him. What kind of father talked to his son like that after a year of separation and worry?

Sam watched as the image of himself on the video screen reached out to take the jar of blood in an effort to prepare the arrows they’d need to hunt the vampires. As the hand of Video!Sam touched the thick glass, his head turned to meet the eyes of the Winchester who was propped on a motel bed watching. “Alea iacta est,” his alter ego rasped.

The jar was warm. Sam had forgotten. How had he forgotten? Indeed, how had he dismissed the fact to begin with? Staring into the eyes of his pixelated image, Sam distinctly remembered the way his fingers had been surprised to find the glass so warm, almost as though the blood inside had been fresh.

Dean brokenbleedingmangleddying. He’s different… He’s not to be trusted, Sam. He ruined the car. Alea iacta est…

“No!” Without thinking, Sam tightened his fingers around the plastic casing of the phone and flung it across the room. It met the wall beside the television with a sound that resembled a fluorescent light bulb exploding and fragmented, raining down onto the wall and carpet in a shower of plastic splinters.

The recoil was instantaneous. Whatever connection he’d broken by destroying the phone reformed in his head, tendrils of livewire electricity gripping and squeezing behind his eyes. “Ahh!” He bent forward again, clawing at his temples with both hands as fresh blood spurted from his eyes.

He knew it was stupid to smash the phone, but the alternative would have been to accept… “NO!” Sam gasped, panting at the constriction in his chest. Mom was gone. Jess was gone. Who the hell knew where Dad was? None of that mattered, not really, because as much as Sam had struggled to deal with those missing pieces of his life, he’d done just that – dealt. But there had been that one thing that he’d always known, in the back of his mind, that he wouldn’t be able to get past. That one thing that had sent him hunting down a faith healer and later, a reaper. There had always been Dean.

Sam’s stomach roiled as his vision went white with the pain reverberating in his head. He reached out for the nightstand in an attempt to pull himself up and try to get out of the room. Whatever was attacking him, he’d brought it with him when he’d brought the phone in. There were salt lines across the doorway. If he could cross the line…

But it wasn’t to be. Sam felt something pop inside his skull, like a bare wire shorting out, and his vision exploded into a blank white canvas. He fell to the floor, knees burning on the threadbare carpet as a fresh gush of blood painted his lips. He was all but choking, and the effort to breathe past the obstructing fluid overrode any muscle control he had left. He curled into a fetal position, shaking uncontrollably as a new message downloaded into his brain and played out on the projection screen of his snowblind inner eye.

The letting is easy. A glint of steel, an edge that slips, just so, through a solitary, rubbery vein, crimson and ropy, bleeding. It's painless, creates its own warm, anesthetic haze.

"Invisible Man," by Queen plays on the periphery of the fog within his clouded mind. It's not his usual mullet rock, but it has wafted out of his subconscious unbidden, a melody upon which he's never dwelt but which has made its mark, sans recording tape, upon this emotion. This is a darker time, a darker night, a darker deed, and the accompaniment seems appropriate, if not nearly distracting enough.

The jar fills slowly, too slowly to keep his mind from drifting into the darkness. The air is pungent, metallic, and thick, not conducive to any train of thought but that which finds him, that which always finds him when, alone, the stillness settles over him. He remembers, now, why his cynical humor, charm, and sarcasm are such important parts of the illusion that is Dean Winchester. Once they protected him, but now they are a means by which to protect Sam. There is nothing left of Dean to protect but Sam. Even his soul is no longer his.

Sam writhed on the floor in agony. His normal visions were painful, like what he imagined the skinwalker had felt downloading his brother’s memories. But this, this was what Sam imagined Dean had suffered, alone in that basement as the charge raped his synapses and tore through his mind. His jaw clenched involuntarily around the denial as his head twisted to ward off the attack.

He has plenty of time to reflect, too, since funeral homes are so hard to find out here in the Colorado sticks.

Sam was forced to watch, an unwilling eavesdropper on his brother’s private anguish, as the blood dripped from the sliced vein and into the familiar jar. He didn’t know how Dean could be so calm, how he could just sit there and wait for the jar to fill.

That was when he saw the pen. It was a pen Sam recognized, the one Dean kept for writing in his journal. They had pens all over the place. More than one pair of their jeans had been ruined by exploded ink cartridges in Laundromat machines, and there were enough in the door pouches of the Impala to translate the Koran into handwritten manuscript. Only this one was ever exactly where it belonged, tucked into the hidden inner pocket of Dean’s leather coat, and Dean only used it to write in his journal.

Sam’s perspective shifted. A wave of vertigo flipped his stomach maliciously, and he wrapped an arm across it, quieting the muscles before he hurled all over himself. He looked over Dean’s shoulder as his brother sat in the Impala, pen poised over his journal while his other arm bled a dark trickle into the waiting jar.

He wanted to look away. While they had both read every word in their father’s ledger, even the embarrassing entries made about them when they were too young to know any better, no one but Dean had ever seen what went between the pages of his own journal, and Sam had allowed him that, the same way Dean had allowed him to keep his life with Jessica to himself.

Sam struggled to turn his head, but the icy fingers of whatever it was in his skull, gripped tightly and pressed him closer, forcing him to read.

Dean is dirty. John is dire. They’re lonely and tired, but John is never Daddy, and Dean is never home.

Sam gasped as though he’d taken a hit to the solar plexus. There was no way, no way in hell his brother, the wise-cracking, crass, cynical son of a bitch who’d tried to pawn him off on a gay man in a bar less than twelve hours ago, had written that.

Of course, it was true.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped being your father and became your drill sergeant.

I want Dean to have a home.

It was twenty-three years of turmoil and bottled-up emotion in twenty words. And not a one was sarcastic or twisted ironically into witty denial. But it was Dean. It was exactly what Sam saw in his brother’s eyes when his brother was saying nothing. Did Dean tell his journal the things he couldn’t tell Sam?

A fresh wave of anguish swept through the youngest Winchester as the slide projector in his mind advanced one frame.

Forever is a long, long time to be alone; Not long enough to be together.

And that was Dean, too. Dean’s journal, Dean’s hand, Dean’s pen scratching across the page while Dean’s blood dripped into a jar beside him. And it was what Dean had said to him in Chicago.

“I want you not to leave just as soon as this is all over.”

The pen continued to scrape along the paper in Dean’s shaky cursive script. Both Dean and John should’ve been doctors, their handwriting was so bad. They tended to write as quickly as the thoughts formed in their heads, whereas Sam thought out each phrase before putting the pen to paper and made each letter clear and articulate, with purpose, to be heard. Dean wrote as though the thought would escape if he didn’t mark its passing, and Sam wrote to be heard. Sad, though, if this was what Dean wrote, Sam wished he’d gotten the chance to hear.

He wondered if Dean had written in his journal before…when he was still his Dean.

Alea iacta est.

He curled in on himself as every muscle in his body contracted at once. “Not Dean! Not Dean! Not Dean!” A voice screamed in his head.

The blood dripped, and the paper rustled. Dean turned the page and continued writing.

The gun is cold and hard. It’s heavy and glows like victory. The gun is peace and rest. Salvation should be softer.

Sam gasped as the tendrils in his mind drew back slightly. As the images faded behind his retinas, Dean closed the journal and slid the pen back into his jacket. The older brother picked up the jar of dead man’s blood, Dean’s blood, and gazed into it sadly, eyes a shade of green that Sam knew too well. Dean’s gaze lifted to the rearview mirror, and in the reflection, Sam saw the dead stare of everything they’d ever hunted.

Sam, your brother, he’s different.

Sam sobbed as the wave of energy receded and left him to come to terms with what he’d been shown. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t… But could it be? Could he have really missed the fact that his own brother was a monster? Had he really been so oblivious? And if it was true, what was he supposed to do with the information?

A long, long time to be alone…

God, Sam didn’t know if he could do “alone” anymore. He didn’t want to try at the moment, either.

Not long enough to be together.

And what if he’d missed goodbye?

When the tingling finally stopped, the numbness was so heavy in his bones, the shock so thick in his mind, that Sam could do little more than curl into himself on the carpet as unconsciousness finally gave him rest.

****

“Sam.”

Sam’s brow furrowed, his entire face crinkled against the dim ambient light of the room as he struggled to open his eyes. The voice, it was so damned familiar.

“Sam, baby, open your eyes for me.” This time there was a touch to accompany the dulcet tones. It was feathery light, a ghost caress, but warm, cherished somehow, and missed. It stroked along his cheek, behind his ear, and down the back of his neck. “Saaaam,” it repeated, distinctly female now. The fingers found that divot in the back of his neck just under his skull, weaving through his hair to press warmly inside. Two small hands lifted his head, tilting it back, and cradling it between them, pressing in behind his ears just the way Jess’s had when he’d kissed…

“Jess…?” He ventured, still unable to open his eyes.

“Sammm.” It was just a breath, a whisper that parted the hair over his ear, and Sam knew it was Jess. Even with his eyes closed he could feel her voice stroking against his face, soft and reverent the way it had been when they’d made love. It was the way he’d always imagined she’d answer when he asked her to marry him. He wished he hadn’t waited. “Sammm. Yesss.”

His heart leapt into his throat, and the thudding was visible behind his eyes as the last vestiges of the earlier attack fizzled in his synapses. His eyelids were so heavy, like every other part of his body, but she was there, he felt her, and he’d be damned if he laid there like a lump and didn’t answer when she called his name.

“Jess,” he whispered, choking on the coagulated blood in the back of his throat. He opened his eyes, and the light wasn’t as harsh as he’d feared. The sharpest rays were diffused to a manageable intensity through the silky strands of her hair, and the glow in her cheeks was just the way he’d remembered her soul shining through.

She leaned over him, smiling and wiping at the blood on his cheeks with the hem of her flowing white nightgown. “Oh baby,” she cooed, “what did he do to you?”

“He?” Sam asked, confused.

“Dean,” Jess said, moving his head into her lap and brushing his hair back gently. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t warn you.”

Sam closed his eyes again and shook his head in disbelief. He moved a hand up to his forehead, pressing it into his skull as if to force away the memory of the earlier revelation. “No. No, I can’t believe…not Dean.”

Jess smiled softly, a pained expression, knowing she was breaking his heart. “I know it’s hard. I’m so, so sorry, Sam, but it’s true. He’s a monster. He died in a wreck before he ever came to get you. Your father did this. He has connections, and he acted rashly. He just couldn’t let go. Dean couldn’t let you go, either. Even after, his first thoughts were of you, but that’s just an echo. That thing is not your brother.”

“I would’ve noticed,” he protested. “I’ve been hunting all my life. I know what to look for.”

“So does he,” she said, pressing a thumb into his temple tenderly, other four fingers stroking into his hair. “Sam, you have noticed. Remember, the homemade gizmo…” She looked up, searching for a word she wasn’t sure she’d ever known. “He made it out of a broken Walkman.”

“The EMF detector?” Sam choked. “Yeah, he made it, but…”

“It took him forever to rig one that didn’t alert on HIM.”

Sam’s hand dropped with a thud as his eyes flew open. Shit, shit, shit. His throat constricted and he rolled his head into Jess’ soft stomach, wrapping an arm over his head and behind her, pulling her around him like a blanket. His eyes burned with tears as he choked back a sob of anguish the likes of which he’d never known, not since Jess.

“I know,” she whispered, rubbing circles on his back. “I know, but he’s the one hurting you, Sam. He doesn’t always mean, doesn’t even know he’s doing it sometimes, it’s just his nature. He’s the reason for all of this.” She sat silent for a moment, just rocking him in her arms as he trembled with grief. “He’s like a magnet, Sam. Evil sees him and follows like a beacon, because where he is, you are.”

She paused, her head falling into her chest as soft tears slid from her eyes. “I hate seeing you hurt, Sam. You follow him blindly into the hunt, and when you fight those…things, they don’t even see him. They’ll always go for you first. Your own mother barely saw him, and she was sorry she couldn’t protect you.”

Sam shook his head in protest. Dean took plenty of abuse from the monsters they hunted. Sam had stitched him up enough times to know the scorecard was pretty even. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed that Jess was right. How often did the creatures attack Dean, and how often did Dean get hurt attacking them?

“But he gets hurt all the time,” he said, ignoring the tickle in his mind that thought she was right. “He almost died, twice…”

“All part of the ruse,” she insisted. She lifted her chin and gazed into the darkness, searching for the words that would convince him. “Did you know he let it touch him, Sam?”

“What?”

“The reaper? In Nebraska? Did you know he let it touch him, waited for it when it came for him? Do you know why?”

“No. Why would he? Why would he do that?” Sam’s chest hitched behind a violent clench of his stomach. He did remember. Dean had been shaken and pale when he’d found him in that parking lot after releasing the reaper from Sue Ann’s spell. Sam had known something had happened, but he and his brother didn’t ever talk about the near-misses. Why tempt fate? Knock on wood.

“He’s angry,” she explained leaning forward so that her lips brushed his ear, the words warm like summer sunshine, melting the cold freeze that had settled over his heart. “He never asked for this. His death was an accident, but he’d been ready for a while. He was a very broken man, Sam. He carried too much, and he was tired. It was his time. But your father wouldn’t let him rest. He was overcome with grief, and he made a poor decision. Dean never got to choose. He’s stuck with a life he never wanted, stuck with forever, because he can’t die, and he hates that.”

Sam’s gaze rose to meet hers, his eyes dark and conflicted. His throat jumped as his head still rocked back and forth, his protests much weaker than they had been.
Jess met his eyes, her face stretched with grief. “Dean’s afraid, too. You know what scares him more than anything. You know he hates alone. Now that’s his fate, his destiny. Eventually everyone will die and leave him, and he’ll still be here. He has real issues with Death. He waited for that reaper in Nebraska. He wanted to know if he could kill Death with death.” She laughed like tiny soap bubbles. “It didn’t work. So he seals himself away, guarding himself so that alone won’t seem like such a blow when it happens. The darkness around him grows by the day.”

Sensing Sam’s faltering resistance, Jess continued. “He’s how the demon found me, Sam. He’s how Meg found you in Burkittsville, how she found you in Chicago. They found you at the hotel because he leaves a trail of darkness behind him that draws them like light to a black hole. Dean’s the reason your father got hurt that night, the reason you had to send John away. He makes a show of saving you, but he’s the one who puts you in danger to begin with. Everything he touches is ruined, like us, Sam.”

“Us?” His throat convulsed around the word.

Jess rubbed her thumbs over his cheekbones as she gazed down at him, a nostalgic faraway gleam in her teary eyes. “We were happy. Remember? Until he came, we had forever.”

“But why are you telling me this? What am I supposed to do with it?”

“You can kill him, Sam. Someone who loves him can kill him. He wants you to do it.”

“No…”

“Sam…”

“No.” He shook his head weakly, cringing as his battered mind moved inside his skull. “I can’t.” I won’t.

“Sam.” She reached her slender fingers around his chin and turned his head up to face her. “I want you to. I wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to die, and stay dead. If he had, I would be alive still. We’d still have forever.” She caressed his chin with her thumb gently, leaned in and kissed him, and he didn’t resist. “I can’t rest Sam. Not knowing he’s here with you. Hurting you. You have to end him. For both of us. And for you.”

He opened his mouth to protest again, but she leaned in and stifled the words with her lips, chasing her breath with her tongue. He tilted his head back and met her, trading kisses for sobs as his resistance melted away.

****

Dean turned the key and felt the engine stutter to a stop beneath him before he swung open the Impala’s door and stepped out of the car. He’d only gotten a couple of leads in his research at the library, all of them stodgy at best, but he’d cut his session short. He was worried about Sam, and despite the fact that Sam’s out of service phone was getting a perfect signal for some reason, Dean’s fully functional phone was refusing to cooperate. Nationwide really wasn’t, and it wasn’t the first time he’d been tempted to use that friggin’ X the Cingular people had for their logo as a target for a voodoo hex.

Anyway, in his experience, research only got you so far. When it came right down to it, usually the situation explained itself when given the chance. And Dean wasn’t leaving Sam alone any longer than he already had.

He crossed the parking lot swiftly, noting that the blinds were still drawn. Mr. Sammy Sunshine would’ve thrown them wide open if he were feeling better, further evidence that he probably had a concussion.

Dean slid his key into the lock and pushed the door open carefully, eyes on the salt line behind the door. He noted with satisfaction that it was still intact, and raised his gaze to the interior of the room.

His satisfied expression melted quickly to one of confusion and betrayal as he met the barrel of a gun with his forehead. The hammer clicked back, and Dean felt the vibration through the steel.

“Gig’s up. Get your ass in here and shut the door.”

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Select excerpts from “Heartbeat” by H.T. Marie. ©April, 2006 and “Invisible Man” by Queen.