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last01standingTitle: The Shadow Men [9/11]
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Kripke owns SPN, not me
Summary: The campus of Stanford lies in ruins. The veil between hell and earth is getting thinner by the day and the only thing worse then the fires are the mysterious men emerging from the flames. [AU, apocafic]
Previous Parts:1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
THE SHADOW MEN
CHAPTER 9
Sam clutched at his head, trying to cope with the sudden sensory overload. The car was gone and he was caught in a swarm of foreign images. There were two men (brothers?) in a field and a girl on a bridge. One of them was stronger then the other and it was just a push, a few words and the girl was falling and the other one (it looked like Andy) started screaming. Fire, fire, everything’s on fire and a man with yellow eyes watched and laughed as—in Peoria, a girl slaughtered her fiancé quietly without warning as the city around her bursts into flames and—here in Guthrie, Dean stood and listened as a man said, ‘now take the gun and put it in your mouth...’
Sam screamed as reality jumped back into focus all at once. They were on the side of the road, Dean had a hand on either shoulder trying to calm him down. Andy ran a hand through his dark curly hair. “Whoa, man. Just--what the fuck was that?”
“What did you do to him!” Dean roared. He dropped his hands from Sam’s shoulders and rounded on Andy. For the first time, Sam realized that Dean was definitely not a small man. He drew himself up, drew his chest up, his voice lowered to a growl. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, dark and cold that could only have come from years in hell. “Whatever the fuck you did to him, stop!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Andy squeaked. “Look, I promise, it’s not me!”
“Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you down to hell,” Dean growled. “He’s the only family I got.”
Family. Sam noticed the word even through the haze of pain. Dean was family and that meant something. He hadn’t really had family since Uncle Bobby passed. “Dean,” he said. “Dean I’m fine. He didn’t do anything to me.”
Dean spun back around, offering Sam a hand up. Sam took it gratefully, hauling himself to his feet. “If it wasn’t him, what the hell was it?”
Sam rubbed his forehead. “Sometimes, I get these—“ He stopped, started again. “Sometimes I get these dreams and sometimes, they come true.” He rubbed at his forehead. “That’s the first time it’s ever happened when I was awake.”
“Like visions?” Andy said. Sam turned toward him. He looked impossibly small in the still air. “Sometimes it starts with visions.”
“Visions,” Dean repeated. “No, no.” His eyes were open in incredulity. The stabilizing hand on his back was gone and he backpedaled away from Sam at top speed, stumbling toward the impala and into the driver’s seat.
Sam staggered after him, putting a hand on the car just as it skidded off the curb and into the street. He jogged after it a few steps but the car didn’t turn around or show any signs of stopping. He stared after it in a mute sort of shock as the impala disappeared around a corner, leaving Sam completely alone. It hadn’t hurt this much when Mason ditched him. Hell the only thing he could think that came close to this was the day Uncle Bobby died or the day Jess and Stanford went up in smoke.
Here, in the abandoned streets of Guthrie, Sam looked at the greenish sky and felt more helpless then he ever had before. Then there was suddenly a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Sam lied.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “But can you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
Sam rubbed at his temples and turned around, forcing himself to focus on the current problem. The last vision or whatever it was, had lead him to Dean. The one before had saved his life. “Do you have a brother?” Sam asked.
“How the hell do you know that?” Andy sputtered stepping back. “I didn’t even know that until the world started falling apart.”
“He killed someone, didn’t he,” Sam said. “A girl.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember. “She jumped--he pushed her to jump.”
Andy looked just sick at the thought. “How the hell did you know that?” he repeated. “Who the hell are you anyway?”
“Sam,” he answered. “I get these visions sometimes and it means something important is going to happen—“ He winced. “Have you ever seen a yellow-eyed man?”
Andy’s eyes widened almost comically. “Webber talked about him. Right before he pushed Tracey—he said the yellow eyed man told him to do things and me, I’ve been having these dreams lately.” He blinked. “Or at least I was having them when I was still sleeping. See it’s this yellow-eyed man, he told me I was special. That I was chosen. He wants me to get this gun and take it to some place in the middle of nowhere so he can—“ Andy waved his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know destroy the world or something. Not that it really needs much help.”
“And are you going to?” Sam asked.
“What?” Andy said. “Am I going to destroy the world? No! I live here. I like it here. There wasn’t anything wrong with the world.”
“Why were you running?” Sam asked.
“Webber,” Andy said, pulling at his hair. “My evil twin or something. I don’t know. Everything’s screwed up. He was trying to kill me. Something about the dude with the yellow eyes.”
“Do you have any idea what this thing wants?” His mind was racing. A yellow-eyed man who was starting fires in Sam’s visions. Maybe this thing was what had started this whole thing, tearing down the border between hell and earth and spilling all the demons into the real world.
“Something about a gun.” Andy frowned, looking more and more stressed out by the minute. “I don’t know what kind but I could probably draw it for you. Kept saying it was with some guy named Winchester.”
“Winchester?” Sam repeated, all the color draining from his face. “You’re sure.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Why? That mean something to you?”
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The vision, this town, it meant something. It meant something big. He felt warm suddenly, heat rising like there were fires coming, just waiting for the spark. “My name is Sam Winchester,” he said.
Andy paled. “Do you have the gun?”
“No,” Sam said and then it hit him all at once. “But that means Dean does.”
“That’s not good,” Andy said. “You know how people are trying to kill me?”
“Yeah,” Sam said.
Andy nodded. “It’s going to be like that but worse.”
________________________________________________________________________
He couldn’t find Dean. He wasn’t anywhere. Sam was frantic. He knew Dean. Dean was skittish and rash and prone to explosions of violence and he couldn’t think someone like that could disappear this complete. But Guthrie was abandoned. There had been no fires here, no one burned alive on the ceilings, but still everyone had left. Andy followed him up and down the empty streets, pulling at his fraying sleeves. That in itself worried Sam. An hour ago, he’d had a gun pointed at Andy, ready and willing to pull the trigger.
“Visions,” Andy said finally. “That’s got to suck.”
Sam glanced over at him and kept walking. “Hasn’t been going on for long. Everything’s sucked lately.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Andy said. “First this weird mind control thing, then some guy shows up saying he’s my brother. Next thing I know my girlfriend’s dead and he’s after me and the world’s on fire.”
“Dean!” Sam called. “Dean!!”
He wanted another vision. He would welcome the stabbing pain that came with it if that meant he’d know where Dean was. He wasn’t sure he could function without the other man at his side. Shadow man or not, Dean had provided him an anchor when he was dangerously close to losing it completely. He’d needed that sort of companionship when Jess had died and Chris had deserted him and Mason had proved himself psychotic.
Like it or not, Dean was all he had to lean on right now and Dean had figured out the psychic thing and freaked. And it hurt. It hurt almost as much as the realization that Uncle Bobby had kept him in the dark for years, that his real father had left him with a near stranger and gone off to die on a hunt.
Andy paused outside a warehouse. “Sam,” he said, extending a finger toward the tiny alley trailing into darkness. “Isn’t that the car?”
It was the impala, cordoned off in the side of the warehouse, abandoned in a way Sam knew Dean would never abandon his only link to his life before. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah that’s the car. Let’s go.”
He started to move, but Andy didn’t budge. “No,” he said. “No, we can’t go in there.”
“Why not.”
“Webber’s in there,” Andy said. There’s a sick look on his face and he was swaying slightly as if the barest breeze would knock him over and knock him out. “I can feel him. It’s some sort of freaky twin thing. We have to go.”
“Dean’s in there,” Sam said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Andy said. “Dean left you. He saw what you were and he freaked. He wouldn’t do this for you.”
Sam ignored the warning, tugging Andy’s sleeve. “It’s all right,” he said. “Dean will know what to do.”
The warehouse is dusty and ill-made and light but random beams of light filtering in through broken windows. Dean was standing stiff as a board ten yards inside. Sam didn’t recognize the posture. He’d seen Dean curled up in fear, swaggering with false bravado, but never this stiff, like all his limbs had been cemented into that one position. “Dean,” Sam said, dropping his hold on Andy’s arm. “Dean!” In a few strides, he was at Dean’s side, searching for any signs of response.
“He’s not going anywhere,” a new voice said. Sam’s head jerked up out of the shadows. The guy was small, Andy’s size with pale skin and light eyes and a plain face. Not threatening in the least. The kind of guy Sam’s eyes used to skate over during college. Something in his eyes flashed white as he said, “You’re not going anywhere either.”
Sam recognized the inflection in the voice, the same tone Andy put into his voice when he was looking for obedience only a hundred times more forceful, more demanding. Sam froze in his place, playing along. If he thought his words held power over Sam he’d get cocky, he’d get stupid and Sam would have his chance.
He learned that from Dean.
“Webber!” Andy cried. “Webber, let them go! They didn’t do anything to you.”
“Andy,” Webber said. His voice was completely calm. “Don’t you see? This is how we get to be together. You and me against the world just like it always should have been.”
“The only way you and me are going to hang out is if we’re the only too left and we’re getting way to close to that.”
“Everything’s going to be all right, brother,” Webber said. His voice was light and earnest, like he believed all this stuff he’d been fed. “The yellow-eyed man says all we need is that gun. It’s the key to everything.” He turned to Sam, creeping closer with those earnest blue eyes. Sam noticed a gun, Dean’s gun clasped in his left hand. “And I’ve heard Winchester has it.” His voice took on that special tone again, pushing in the depths of Sam’s mind but getting nowhere. “You’re Sam Winchester aren’t you.”
Sam’s eyes flickered to Dean. He was breathing heavily, straining against whatever spell Webber held him with. His face was creased with pain or guilt or something different that Sam didn’t even recognized. “Yeah,” Sam said because there was no use in denying it. Dean had probably told him everything. “Yeah, I’m Sam Winchester.”
“I’m looking for something,” Webber said. “An antique. A colt. Do you know where it is?”
Sam shook his head. Dean took a shuddering gasp. “You already have a gun,” Sam said. “Why do you need another?”
“Sam,” Andy said. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, Sam,” Webber said. “Tell the truth.”
“No,” Sam said. And it was the truth. If the gun was with him, it was in the trunk of the impala, but there was no way to know for sure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Andy protested. “Neither of them do so let them go!”
“What are you doing, Andrew?” Webber demanded, rounding on his brother. “Why are you siding with these people? You don’t even know them. I’m just trying to help you. The older one wants you dead.”
“I’m siding with these people,” Andy spat, drawing up every spare inch of height, “because I’m sure as hell not siding with you.”
“Oh,” Webber said with apparently genuine remorse. His face was creased into a frown as he raised the gun. “Then I’m really sorry it had to be this way.”
Sam turned away a split second before the gun went off. But he heard it, the crack and then quieter, the splatter of blood and the dull thump of the body hitting the floor. Dean’s eyes were open wide, panicked. “I don’t know anything!” Sam screamed. “I swear to God, I don’t know where your stupid gun is!”
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Webber said and he sounded like he meant it. His voice was laced with thick grief. “I would have liked this to turn out some other way.”
And quickly, smoothly, with a decisiveness Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen outside the movies, Webber turned toward him and Dean, squeezing off two shots in rapid succession. One meant for Dean and the other meant for him. Sam closed his eyes and screamed, “No!”
He was waiting for the pain, waiting for the bullet to slice through his forehead cutting a hole through his brain and exploding out the other side. He never thought he would die like this. Not even when he’d started hunting. He thought it would be a demon ripping through his skin or a werewolf’s claw catching him by surprise or an angry spirit toppling him over a cliff. Not this.
But the bullet never came. Sam cracked open his eyes and saw--hanging, suspended in front of him--a pair of bullets. One just before Dean’s face and the other inches in front of his own nose. His eyes widened slightly and both bullets dropped to the ground, bouncing off the concrete floors with a metallic ping. Webber looked at him with mild surprise. “What do you know,” he said. “You’re one of us too.” He approached Sam slowly, almost calculating.
Sam didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want to be put in the same category as this murder with a gun and the yellow-eyed man in his vision. He just wanted to go back to Stanford and curl up in bed next to Jessica and sleep for the next ten years.
Dean flexed his fingers rhythmically, there was a vein bulging in his neck. Webber past him, not even noticing him and as soon as he was out of eyesight, Dean lurched into action, seizing Webber by the neck and twisting hard.
Sam could hear the crack resounding through the room, like someone taking a sledgehammer to a thick piece of wood. The head lolled strangely, face slipping in and out of shadows for a moment and then Dean let the body drop, toppling graceless a Sam’s feet, right next to the pair of bullets Sam had somehow stopped with his mind.
Dean bent down and pried his gun from Webber’s slacking grip.
“Oh my God,” Sam said, feeling sick. He bent double, clutching at his knees, dry heaving into the dusty ground. He looked up just far enough to catch a glimpse of what remained of Andy’s face. “Oh, God.”
He looked up to see Dean standing over him, face colder. Slowly, he raised the gun level with Sam’s forehead and flicked the safety off. His voice was shaking. “What the hell are you?”
________________________________________________________________________
I decided to be nice and bump up the posting schedule. If all goes according to plan, 10 should be up late Thursday and 11 on Sunday morning. Thanks for sticking with me! We're getting close to the end!
| 10 |
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Kripke owns SPN, not me
Summary: The campus of Stanford lies in ruins. The veil between hell and earth is getting thinner by the day and the only thing worse then the fires are the mysterious men emerging from the flames. [AU, apocafic]
Previous Parts:1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
CHAPTER 9
Sam clutched at his head, trying to cope with the sudden sensory overload. The car was gone and he was caught in a swarm of foreign images. There were two men (brothers?) in a field and a girl on a bridge. One of them was stronger then the other and it was just a push, a few words and the girl was falling and the other one (it looked like Andy) started screaming. Fire, fire, everything’s on fire and a man with yellow eyes watched and laughed as—in Peoria, a girl slaughtered her fiancé quietly without warning as the city around her bursts into flames and—here in Guthrie, Dean stood and listened as a man said, ‘now take the gun and put it in your mouth...’
Sam screamed as reality jumped back into focus all at once. They were on the side of the road, Dean had a hand on either shoulder trying to calm him down. Andy ran a hand through his dark curly hair. “Whoa, man. Just--what the fuck was that?”
“What did you do to him!” Dean roared. He dropped his hands from Sam’s shoulders and rounded on Andy. For the first time, Sam realized that Dean was definitely not a small man. He drew himself up, drew his chest up, his voice lowered to a growl. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, dark and cold that could only have come from years in hell. “Whatever the fuck you did to him, stop!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Andy squeaked. “Look, I promise, it’s not me!”
“Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you down to hell,” Dean growled. “He’s the only family I got.”
Family. Sam noticed the word even through the haze of pain. Dean was family and that meant something. He hadn’t really had family since Uncle Bobby passed. “Dean,” he said. “Dean I’m fine. He didn’t do anything to me.”
Dean spun back around, offering Sam a hand up. Sam took it gratefully, hauling himself to his feet. “If it wasn’t him, what the hell was it?”
Sam rubbed his forehead. “Sometimes, I get these—“ He stopped, started again. “Sometimes I get these dreams and sometimes, they come true.” He rubbed at his forehead. “That’s the first time it’s ever happened when I was awake.”
“Like visions?” Andy said. Sam turned toward him. He looked impossibly small in the still air. “Sometimes it starts with visions.”
“Visions,” Dean repeated. “No, no.” His eyes were open in incredulity. The stabilizing hand on his back was gone and he backpedaled away from Sam at top speed, stumbling toward the impala and into the driver’s seat.
Sam staggered after him, putting a hand on the car just as it skidded off the curb and into the street. He jogged after it a few steps but the car didn’t turn around or show any signs of stopping. He stared after it in a mute sort of shock as the impala disappeared around a corner, leaving Sam completely alone. It hadn’t hurt this much when Mason ditched him. Hell the only thing he could think that came close to this was the day Uncle Bobby died or the day Jess and Stanford went up in smoke.
Here, in the abandoned streets of Guthrie, Sam looked at the greenish sky and felt more helpless then he ever had before. Then there was suddenly a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Sam lied.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “But can you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
Sam rubbed at his temples and turned around, forcing himself to focus on the current problem. The last vision or whatever it was, had lead him to Dean. The one before had saved his life. “Do you have a brother?” Sam asked.
“How the hell do you know that?” Andy sputtered stepping back. “I didn’t even know that until the world started falling apart.”
“He killed someone, didn’t he,” Sam said. “A girl.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember. “She jumped--he pushed her to jump.”
Andy looked just sick at the thought. “How the hell did you know that?” he repeated. “Who the hell are you anyway?”
“Sam,” he answered. “I get these visions sometimes and it means something important is going to happen—“ He winced. “Have you ever seen a yellow-eyed man?”
Andy’s eyes widened almost comically. “Webber talked about him. Right before he pushed Tracey—he said the yellow eyed man told him to do things and me, I’ve been having these dreams lately.” He blinked. “Or at least I was having them when I was still sleeping. See it’s this yellow-eyed man, he told me I was special. That I was chosen. He wants me to get this gun and take it to some place in the middle of nowhere so he can—“ Andy waved his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know destroy the world or something. Not that it really needs much help.”
“And are you going to?” Sam asked.
“What?” Andy said. “Am I going to destroy the world? No! I live here. I like it here. There wasn’t anything wrong with the world.”
“Why were you running?” Sam asked.
“Webber,” Andy said, pulling at his hair. “My evil twin or something. I don’t know. Everything’s screwed up. He was trying to kill me. Something about the dude with the yellow eyes.”
“Do you have any idea what this thing wants?” His mind was racing. A yellow-eyed man who was starting fires in Sam’s visions. Maybe this thing was what had started this whole thing, tearing down the border between hell and earth and spilling all the demons into the real world.
“Something about a gun.” Andy frowned, looking more and more stressed out by the minute. “I don’t know what kind but I could probably draw it for you. Kept saying it was with some guy named Winchester.”
“Winchester?” Sam repeated, all the color draining from his face. “You’re sure.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Why? That mean something to you?”
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The vision, this town, it meant something. It meant something big. He felt warm suddenly, heat rising like there were fires coming, just waiting for the spark. “My name is Sam Winchester,” he said.
Andy paled. “Do you have the gun?”
“No,” Sam said and then it hit him all at once. “But that means Dean does.”
“That’s not good,” Andy said. “You know how people are trying to kill me?”
“Yeah,” Sam said.
Andy nodded. “It’s going to be like that but worse.”
He couldn’t find Dean. He wasn’t anywhere. Sam was frantic. He knew Dean. Dean was skittish and rash and prone to explosions of violence and he couldn’t think someone like that could disappear this complete. But Guthrie was abandoned. There had been no fires here, no one burned alive on the ceilings, but still everyone had left. Andy followed him up and down the empty streets, pulling at his fraying sleeves. That in itself worried Sam. An hour ago, he’d had a gun pointed at Andy, ready and willing to pull the trigger.
“Visions,” Andy said finally. “That’s got to suck.”
Sam glanced over at him and kept walking. “Hasn’t been going on for long. Everything’s sucked lately.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Andy said. “First this weird mind control thing, then some guy shows up saying he’s my brother. Next thing I know my girlfriend’s dead and he’s after me and the world’s on fire.”
“Dean!” Sam called. “Dean!!”
He wanted another vision. He would welcome the stabbing pain that came with it if that meant he’d know where Dean was. He wasn’t sure he could function without the other man at his side. Shadow man or not, Dean had provided him an anchor when he was dangerously close to losing it completely. He’d needed that sort of companionship when Jess had died and Chris had deserted him and Mason had proved himself psychotic.
Like it or not, Dean was all he had to lean on right now and Dean had figured out the psychic thing and freaked. And it hurt. It hurt almost as much as the realization that Uncle Bobby had kept him in the dark for years, that his real father had left him with a near stranger and gone off to die on a hunt.
Andy paused outside a warehouse. “Sam,” he said, extending a finger toward the tiny alley trailing into darkness. “Isn’t that the car?”
It was the impala, cordoned off in the side of the warehouse, abandoned in a way Sam knew Dean would never abandon his only link to his life before. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah that’s the car. Let’s go.”
He started to move, but Andy didn’t budge. “No,” he said. “No, we can’t go in there.”
“Why not.”
“Webber’s in there,” Andy said. There’s a sick look on his face and he was swaying slightly as if the barest breeze would knock him over and knock him out. “I can feel him. It’s some sort of freaky twin thing. We have to go.”
“Dean’s in there,” Sam said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Andy said. “Dean left you. He saw what you were and he freaked. He wouldn’t do this for you.”
Sam ignored the warning, tugging Andy’s sleeve. “It’s all right,” he said. “Dean will know what to do.”
The warehouse is dusty and ill-made and light but random beams of light filtering in through broken windows. Dean was standing stiff as a board ten yards inside. Sam didn’t recognize the posture. He’d seen Dean curled up in fear, swaggering with false bravado, but never this stiff, like all his limbs had been cemented into that one position. “Dean,” Sam said, dropping his hold on Andy’s arm. “Dean!” In a few strides, he was at Dean’s side, searching for any signs of response.
“He’s not going anywhere,” a new voice said. Sam’s head jerked up out of the shadows. The guy was small, Andy’s size with pale skin and light eyes and a plain face. Not threatening in the least. The kind of guy Sam’s eyes used to skate over during college. Something in his eyes flashed white as he said, “You’re not going anywhere either.”
Sam recognized the inflection in the voice, the same tone Andy put into his voice when he was looking for obedience only a hundred times more forceful, more demanding. Sam froze in his place, playing along. If he thought his words held power over Sam he’d get cocky, he’d get stupid and Sam would have his chance.
He learned that from Dean.
“Webber!” Andy cried. “Webber, let them go! They didn’t do anything to you.”
“Andy,” Webber said. His voice was completely calm. “Don’t you see? This is how we get to be together. You and me against the world just like it always should have been.”
“The only way you and me are going to hang out is if we’re the only too left and we’re getting way to close to that.”
“Everything’s going to be all right, brother,” Webber said. His voice was light and earnest, like he believed all this stuff he’d been fed. “The yellow-eyed man says all we need is that gun. It’s the key to everything.” He turned to Sam, creeping closer with those earnest blue eyes. Sam noticed a gun, Dean’s gun clasped in his left hand. “And I’ve heard Winchester has it.” His voice took on that special tone again, pushing in the depths of Sam’s mind but getting nowhere. “You’re Sam Winchester aren’t you.”
Sam’s eyes flickered to Dean. He was breathing heavily, straining against whatever spell Webber held him with. His face was creased with pain or guilt or something different that Sam didn’t even recognized. “Yeah,” Sam said because there was no use in denying it. Dean had probably told him everything. “Yeah, I’m Sam Winchester.”
“I’m looking for something,” Webber said. “An antique. A colt. Do you know where it is?”
Sam shook his head. Dean took a shuddering gasp. “You already have a gun,” Sam said. “Why do you need another?”
“Sam,” Andy said. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, Sam,” Webber said. “Tell the truth.”
“No,” Sam said. And it was the truth. If the gun was with him, it was in the trunk of the impala, but there was no way to know for sure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Andy protested. “Neither of them do so let them go!”
“What are you doing, Andrew?” Webber demanded, rounding on his brother. “Why are you siding with these people? You don’t even know them. I’m just trying to help you. The older one wants you dead.”
“I’m siding with these people,” Andy spat, drawing up every spare inch of height, “because I’m sure as hell not siding with you.”
“Oh,” Webber said with apparently genuine remorse. His face was creased into a frown as he raised the gun. “Then I’m really sorry it had to be this way.”
Sam turned away a split second before the gun went off. But he heard it, the crack and then quieter, the splatter of blood and the dull thump of the body hitting the floor. Dean’s eyes were open wide, panicked. “I don’t know anything!” Sam screamed. “I swear to God, I don’t know where your stupid gun is!”
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Webber said and he sounded like he meant it. His voice was laced with thick grief. “I would have liked this to turn out some other way.”
And quickly, smoothly, with a decisiveness Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen outside the movies, Webber turned toward him and Dean, squeezing off two shots in rapid succession. One meant for Dean and the other meant for him. Sam closed his eyes and screamed, “No!”
He was waiting for the pain, waiting for the bullet to slice through his forehead cutting a hole through his brain and exploding out the other side. He never thought he would die like this. Not even when he’d started hunting. He thought it would be a demon ripping through his skin or a werewolf’s claw catching him by surprise or an angry spirit toppling him over a cliff. Not this.
But the bullet never came. Sam cracked open his eyes and saw--hanging, suspended in front of him--a pair of bullets. One just before Dean’s face and the other inches in front of his own nose. His eyes widened slightly and both bullets dropped to the ground, bouncing off the concrete floors with a metallic ping. Webber looked at him with mild surprise. “What do you know,” he said. “You’re one of us too.” He approached Sam slowly, almost calculating.
Sam didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want to be put in the same category as this murder with a gun and the yellow-eyed man in his vision. He just wanted to go back to Stanford and curl up in bed next to Jessica and sleep for the next ten years.
Dean flexed his fingers rhythmically, there was a vein bulging in his neck. Webber past him, not even noticing him and as soon as he was out of eyesight, Dean lurched into action, seizing Webber by the neck and twisting hard.
Sam could hear the crack resounding through the room, like someone taking a sledgehammer to a thick piece of wood. The head lolled strangely, face slipping in and out of shadows for a moment and then Dean let the body drop, toppling graceless a Sam’s feet, right next to the pair of bullets Sam had somehow stopped with his mind.
Dean bent down and pried his gun from Webber’s slacking grip.
“Oh my God,” Sam said, feeling sick. He bent double, clutching at his knees, dry heaving into the dusty ground. He looked up just far enough to catch a glimpse of what remained of Andy’s face. “Oh, God.”
He looked up to see Dean standing over him, face colder. Slowly, he raised the gun level with Sam’s forehead and flicked the safety off. His voice was shaking. “What the hell are you?”
I decided to be nice and bump up the posting schedule. If all goes according to plan, 10 should be up late Thursday and 11 on Sunday morning. Thanks for sticking with me! We're getting close to the end!
| 10 |
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(no subject)
9/9/08 17:54 (UTC)(no subject)
9/9/08 18:06 (UTC)(no subject)
9/9/08 21:37 (UTC)Poor Andy. Poor freaked out Dean. Poor confused and hurting Sammy.
(no subject)
9/9/08 21:46 (UTC)Dude, you know I had the same conversation with myself when I was writing this. It was like, 'OMG yay! Andy!' follow right by the serious plotty side of my brain saying, 'you do realize you're going to have to kill him for this story to work, right?'. It totally SUCKED.
(no subject)
10/9/08 00:12 (UTC)(no subject)
10/9/08 02:04 (UTC)(no subject)
11/9/08 00:05 (UTC)*sniffle*
He didn't deserve that. And Dean - totally freaked, and why wouldn't he be?
*pets him*
(no subject)
11/9/08 15:56 (UTC)Yeah, Dean's freaked. He's been in hell for 20 years and now I'm just beating up on him. It's unfair like that. =)
(no subject)
15/9/08 11:29 (UTC)Also, I love your utter, utter cruelty at bringing up the "family" thing and then throwing the visions, telekinesis, etc. at the boys. Good stuff.