SPN fic: The New Deal 8/8
Chapter Eight/Last Train to Glory

I ain’t a man of constant sorrow: Nebraska isn’t where Dean wanted to spend his last February on earth, but an angry Depression-era ghost complicates things
I ain’t seen trouble all day long: COMPLETE — Gen, Season 3, early February. Set in the Red ‘verse, this time with direct references to events (spoilers, even!) in Dazzleland and Fire in the Hole, but I think you’ll be able to follow along even if you haven’t read those ones. But maybe you’ll want to read them now! </hucksterism>
We are only passengers on the last train to glory: PG-13 for the cursing.
That will soon be long, long gone: A whole lotta thanks are due, and I’m afraid this is going to be longer than a screenwriter’s Oscar speech. Firstly, many, many thanks to all the folks that wished me a birthday happiness…I’ve been traveling around BC, so I wasn’t as on the ball as I might have been in showing my gratitude (I’m lookin’ at YOU, riverbella). Many people have been AWESOME at helping with the visuals, including meret and the always amazing, amazing smilla02for the awesome covers! Smilla and may7fic and catsbycat supplied me with iconage. sylvia_bond went above and beyond to provide me with site photographs of the locations I was talking about. extraonions? Next up, your Sweet Charity fic! As always, I don’t do this without the betas, sasquashme and lemmypie. They are, quite simply, Kings of the Road — I don’t leave home without them.

Read previous chapters



—-

Story Thus Far: The Winchesters link a series of mysterious Nebraska deaths to the ghost of a 1930s railroad policeman, Robert Lewis, who had an intense hatred for hobos and those who helped hobos. Sam figures out that the elderly Miss Marie Sault is unwittingly responsible for a sporadically-appearing ghost jungle: her anger at a disneyfied re-creation project and subsequent vow to set things right coincided with the hellgate opening in Wyoming. Lewis, an evil spirit locked in Hell, escaped. While Sam disperses the ghost jungle, Dean, luring Lewis into Miss Sault’s barn, is caught up in the mirage and disappears into a dream memory of the time he caught a train out west to visit a Stanford-era Sam.

——-

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, (1953)

—-

Dean wasn’t moving, didn’t look like he was going to move any time soon. To Sam’s practiced eye, Dean didn’t appear to have much wrong with him other than bruises — no broken bones, as far as Sam could tell, no huge gaping wounds, no obvious trauma other than, well, the obvious fact that he was completely unconscious.

The sun came up and the prairie was just the same, it was like some framed print on a Sunday school wall, all beams of light and rosy clouds. Sam felt like a big hand might descend from the sky, God creating something, or maybe about to destroy it, but Sam had no idea what God might want to point out to him. His brother was half-dead on his lap, and maybe God had something to say about that, but Sam doubted it. The God Sam believed in seemed to be on vacation this last while.

Behind them, brushed gold with sunrise, Marie stared into the blank vastness of the Great Plains, home of nomads since time immemorial, the last vestiges of what she had held on to having just evaporated with the sunrise and Sam, no matter that Dean lay unmoving against his knee, found a moment to mourn with her. He stared over his shoulder, looking at her, then he dipped his chin back to his brother and slid an arm under Dean’s shoulders, thinking that he’d be able to sling him over his shoulder fireman style.

He must have made some noise, a grunt, something like a question, because Marie roused herself, wind teasing strands of hair out her braid like Christmas tinsel left on a brittle curbside tree come January. She stared at him, eyes shuttered, unreadable, as far away as space and years would allow. He watched as the present came home to Marie, and he saw her: impossibly old, alone, the last of her kind.

She grimaced, unyielding to Sam’s kind gaze. “Bring him to the house, I guess.”

Sam shook his head, churning inside. I can call Lewis back, Sam thought. No problem.

“Is he breathing?” Marie took a few steps and bent down to Dean, touched the side of his face, her eyes softening. “He’s breathing. That’s something.” Her hands shook, but it was age; the rest of her was rock steady. “There’s a time for letting go, Sam, letting things take their natural course.”

“There’s nothing natural about this,” Sam snapped, looking at Dean’s still face. “And he’s not going anywhere.”

Marie stood, put her hands on her hips. “I once saw a man kicked in the head by a horse. He lasted a while. I sometimes wonder if modern medicine would have saved him. I doubt it. We can’t go back.” But she was talking to herself, and Sam let her. She started walking to the house so slowly that Sam was reminded that she was chasing the tail end of a hundred years and had just stayed up all night, fought a ghost, said goodbyes to a lover and a dead child.

So he didn’t curse, though he felt like it.

Smart money said bring Dean to a hospital, but the hospital in Ogallala wasn’t an option, not with the warrants and an already curious sheriff’s department. Not when there was nothing to be done, no real physical reason why Dean was insensible. Sam tapped Dean’s face, wondered if they had something so Victorian as smelling salts in the first aid kit. I’ll phone Bobby. We’ll work it out, he’ll wake up. And needing some confirmation of this, Sam slid two fingers up the groove of Dean’s neck to rest on his carotid artery, felt the slow pulse of life stir there, soft as the patter of spring drizzle against a canvas awning. Almost not there, ephemeral as cobweb and mist. But something to hang on to, surely.

Sam hoisted Dean’s weight across his shoulders, strangely gratified that his brother was warm — that’s good, not fever, just alive — and staggered down the worn path to the farmhouse, took the porch steps like he was going to break them. Marie opened the door for him and Sam carefully negotiated the door jamb so as not to hit Dean’s head against it.

In the house, Marie directed Sam to a spare bedroom on the main floor, just outside the kitchen, the narrow bed stripped bare and unused, and Sam lowered Dean’s dead weight onto it. Straightening, Sam surveyed his brother again, fearful he was missing something — I should take him to the hospital anyway, that’s what any normal person would do. But Sam wasn’t a normal person, and he knew it. Neither of them were and this wasn’t a normal situation, a normal injury. This was Dean on the road, traveling somewhere, stuck somewhere. Like with the djinn a little, like when he’d been in the coma. He’d woken up those two times too.

Sam had woken up from death. Winchesters tended to wake up eventually, though the cost was sometimes too high.

I just have to figure it out. But he hadn’t had much luck figuring out ways to save Dean lately.

Marie came back from the kitchen with a wet cloth, as though that would help anything. Sam wiped Dean’s face, but didn’t say a word. He went to the car, got some books, thumbed through them. The sun came up and Marie volunteered coffee, tea, something to eat, but Sam refused. The longer Dean remained unconscious, the worse the medical prognosis. Sam had been so focused on getting him back, he hadn’t worried about the condition. Now, he did. There was irony hidden in there, something about the relative condition in which Winchesters tended to return from the dead, but he was too tired to find it.

“You should eat,” Marie said, came beside him, one hand on his shoulder. “Or sleep.” She paused and Sam looked up at her, bleary-eyed.

“No, thanks.” He was used to going without sleep. The new normal was using the time that Dean slept to conduct research. This was just a bit more immediate. He phoned Bobby, but only got the answering machine.

He made no progress with the books, and when he got back up again, stiff, cold, feeling as though his skin was too tight on his face, there was no change. Dean, pale as the sky outside, bruises scudding like dark clouds on face and throat. Warm, and breathing, but absent. Gone.

Reluctantly, Sam accepted a cup of tea from Marie, strong enough to take the silver plating off the spoon. They sat at the kitchen table and Sam scrubbed his face with his hands, grateful for the strong cup. Between them rested an old box decorated with burnt wooden matchsticks, the interior pasted with small cigar bands, colorful as a small quilt. Tramp art, Sam knew. Jess had told him her mother collected it.

Sam turned the chipped cup around on the table, noticed the intersecting circles the dripped tea made. He swiped it with his sleeve, because Marie was taking what was in the box out, laying them down on the table like a new card game. Old photos, different odd sizes that weren’t in production anymore, black and white, furled edges, brittle as dried leaves fallen on November sod. She laid them out between them, patternless, like some weird tarot configuration unknown to Sam.

“This one,” Marie said. “That was my daddy.” A gentle-looking man with little hair and round glasses, he grasped at the hand of a girl with cropped hair, who turned away from the camera like it would shoot her with lasers. “I was shy. Didn’t like getting my photo taken. I was maybe twelve there.” There were images of the farmhouse when it was new, the barn behind it whole, and vital, garden tall with sunflowers. Marie picked through the photos remaining in the box, perhaps sorting them by feel of the paper’s grain, or the size. She seized one between two fingers, pulled it out.

She laid it down, face up, a trump card.

“It’s Joe,” Sam said, reaching out and picking it up to better see it. A professional photo perhaps taken by an itinerant photographer, Joe, maybe fifteen or sixteen, eyes bright and smiling, face round and spackled with freckles, no amount of photographer’s cajoling could make him take the camera seriously.

“He gave it to me. Told me his mother had it taken. Before.”

“Before?” Sam looked up, and Marie was calm. She hadn’t slept either but the lack of it didn’t seem to bother her. Old people needed less sleep, Sam had once read.

Nodding, Marie re-filled her cup from the tin teapot on the woodstove. “Before the bank foreclosed on their farm, he said.” She slumped in her chair again, leaned back, took a long sip. “He went out to find work, kept coming back to make sure they were okay. Ventured further and further out, took jobs where he could, season here, week there. One day,” and she lifted her hand as though she was going to point to something, but finding nothing, rested it again on the table amidst the photos, “he came back and they were gone. All of them, just up and left. The farm was stripped bare, no note, nothing to help him know where they’d got to. He was maybe eighteen then. Went to the bank, but it was gone too. Never found them, but he guessed they went to California like so many others.”

“But he came back,” Sam whispered, thinking about wandering and how it was never aimless, not for any of them, but least of all for Winchesters.

“He did.” She nodded. “I should have listened to him, Sam. You know,” and she stared at him, hard, eyes like playground marbles, contested, hard-won, “dying is easy. It is. You just go. But living? That’s the hard part.” Her eyes were dry. She wasn’t going to cry anymore. “You know, I’ve been thinking. That damned Hoboville they’re building. They’re getting it all wrong. I should set them straight.”

Sam smiled. “No one else cares as much.” And that was the truth. He tried to imagine Avison and Marie together and that made him smile harder.

Sam finished his cup before he checked on Dean again. No change, no sign of progress, no sign of decline. Stasis.

The sun streamed through the windows, gorgeous, the day prairie bright, bitterly cold, no chinook. Sam took his coat, trying to come to terms with waiting it out versus taking chances. He realized that the answer had been in the offing right from the beginning. Think outside the box, idiot.

He came out onto the porch, his boots heavy, knocking hollowly against the loose boards, paint peeling, about five years past when new paint would have made a difference. Rotting now. They’d need replacing, but he couldn’t actually imagine Marie doing it. He stepped down onto the path, and passed the charred remains of the baby’s funeral pyre towards the barn. He wished that he had a name to pin to the child, but there were always loose ends and perhaps some were secret, were only known in the hearts of ghosts. He stared at the barn, blasted with prairie bright. It was a day for sunglasses.

There was little doubt in Sam’s mind that she’d be there, waiting for him to ask.

Sure enough, he eased the barn door to the side, the roller mechanism rusted almost beyond use, and Ruby came away from her lean against the post, where she’d been examining Sam’s nighttime obliteration of shame. She smiled, drawing dimples on one side of her mouth. “Nice work, cupcake,” she said.

“Tell me,” Sam said, past niceties. You didn’t bargain with these things, he reminded himself. “Where did he go, that time he caught out?”

She was there, he knew, to answer just this question.

—

Okay, well, that was weird.

One minute, he’d been surrounded by fire, Lewis picking him up, throwing him clear across…across — and then back here, the stolen motorcycle humming between his knees, the very real fear of gunfire at his back because those guys in the wrecking yard were shitting themselves, had unclipped the dogs from their leashes, but the highway was open in front of him, was right there. Well, not open, it was coastal driving in California, but maneuverable, at least, if you treated cars and transports as slow lumbering trees best dodged by gunning the motorbike to hyperspeed. He was like Luke Skywalker in Endor, zooming through the forest, before he met up with those lame Ewoks. It took all Dean’s concentration, to avoid traffic and go that fast.

He wished he had a helmet, because there were bugs and the wind in his eyes whipped tears all along both temples, evaporating in speed and warmth. There were probably laws about these things, but they’d have to catch him first, and hell, he seemed to recall that he hadn’t been pulled over the first time he’d done this.

Exit to Palo Alto, Christ this was easy, might as well be a breadcrumb trail to Sam’s door. Dean still couldn’t quite remember what had happened next, but that was okay, because he was almost there, and thinking too far ahead of himself wasn’t exactly in his nature. He geared down, took the off ramp, knew that he ought to be careful of cops — he wasn’t wanted in 2002, but there had been that high-speed chase through downtown Vegas in Dad’s truck, and this was a stolen motorbike, and he had a couple of aliases in the wallet — but he didn’t really have concern for cops in him either. He should, knew that one day he would have that fear, but he didn’t want to think of the reasons for that, didn’t want to think in future tense at all.

This time, he didn’t have to consult the campus maps, he knew exactly how to get to Sam’s dorm, even remembered where the parking lot was, wasn’t going to have to worry about buying a parking ticket, because he knew if he could just see Sam, this would all be okay. He’d thought that the first time, too, he remembered as he pulled into an illegal spot in front of the parking ticket machine — hell, it wasn’t even a spot, was it — and killed the engine. After the constant noise and the vibration, it felt strangely quiet, like a church, a holy space. He sat for a moment, a cowboy at the end of the trail, not exactly coming home, because home was one of those moveable places, winked in and out of his life depending on who was where. So, a sort of homecoming.

Had he gone straight up to Sam’s room? Or found him in the library, bent over a stack of books? Playing hackysack on the front lawn? He couldn’t remember, so he sat for a moment as the motorcycle cooled beneath him. He hadn’t ridden out on it, he knew. This is where they parted ways, he and the motorcycle. Shit. He slid his weight to one side and engaged the stand, got all the way off, his hands and legs still buzzing with the ride. If it hadn’t been for the car, he thought with a smile, one hand trailing along the warm gas tank, turning.

His father was watching him with dark eyes, arms folded across a jacket too warm for the day, serious as an arrow to the chest. Dean’s breath stopped as it had the first time, caught, strangled. John Winchester hadn’t shaved in at least two weeks, hair was flattened from a baseball cap that Dean could still see on the black truck’s seat, driver’s door open.

“Why aren’t you in Maine?” Dean blurted out before hitting edit. It had been a long fucking year, the one that had come before this one, and he and his father had come to a final, bloody understanding: Don’t ask, don’t tell. No such thing as sharing, but they were also past blind obedience as well.

“Why aren’t you in Colorado?” So, that was the game, and John softened it with a smile. So often, John’s smiles made Dean wary, forced him to look for the hidden agenda. Not this time.

This time, the smile twisted inside him, a hand squeezing his lungs. He’s dead. Dear God, he’s gone and why’s he here now? Because he had been here the first time, too, Dean remembered, heart sinking. Improbably, he felt the weight of the world on him, like he was walking around in soaking wet clothes. John rested his body against the truck, so black it must have burned like hot stove. Getting heat into his bones, and Dean remembered the wrapped body on a funeral pyre and lying to Sam about what had been said and he thought, I can’t cry in front of him, I can’t.

“He’s on the front steps,” John said suddenly, moving the conversation like spilled quicksilver. “I swear he’s grown another foot, kid’s a goddamn weed. We turn around and he grows some. Every time.” He scratched his beard like it tickled. “He’s in the middle of a debate with some short guy.”

“They’re all short guys,” Dean said, not knowing quite what to do, buying time with jokes. Like he always did.

John grinned, head tipped right back, eyes closed, enjoying the sun. Not angry, but not moving either. Dean could read his father as easily as he could the Holy Bible. “He looks like he’s doing just fine.”

“Did you…” Stopped. “Do you check up on him often?”

One eye cracked open. Dean hadn’t asked that the first time. He’d been shitting bricks the first time. Now, he knew better. John’s smile widened. “What do you think?”

He wasn’t really asking that, had never really wanted to know what Dean had thought about anything, least of all his brother. Dean licked his lips.

“I think you’re a selfish bastard. You come out to see him all the time, don’t you? Never told me about it, would just tell me that you were going to hunt something in Maine, send me down to chase some kind of shit in New Orleans or whatever. Disappear. You just…” and the verb tenses slipped between past and present and future, and now he was choking and his throat burned like a sonofabitch, “…you just take the fuck off.”

Jesus Christ he was angry, and that’s not what he wanted, not what was needed, not how you talked to John Winchester, living or dead.

“Whew,” John said, eyebrows lifting, but altering his stance just a little, so that Dean knew he was listening, knew he meant business. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, son?”

Dean cursed, turned away, hands on his hips, walking a slow circle. Buying time, trying to remember.

__


Ruby the demon told a damn good story. It was a skill, Sam knew; Ruby must have had a lot of practice stringing people along. She was probably old as the hills, anyway, maybe knew a time and a place where the talent to tell stories was on par with the ability to make rain or transform into an animal.

“He came to…to see me? All that way?” But it had started with the phone calls, Sam remembered suddenly. A flurry of calls, some when Dean sounded drunk, crazy calls filled with obscure movie references. Sam had tried to ignore them, had erased them immediately, trying desperately for a cut-off. It hadn’t worked though. “No way. I never saw him,” he said to Ruby, confused. “You’re full of shit.”

“You would know?” she asked with a twist to her mouth.

“Yeah. He doesn’t come all that way without seeing me.” He cleared his throat. “If Dean came halfway across the continent to see me, what stopped him in the parking lot?”

“Same thing that always stopped him.”

Sam looked away, gut roiling, thinking he’d gotten over it, had understood how they’d been raised. “Dad?”

“He told his good little soldier to get in the truck, and he did it.” Ruby had been pacing. Now, she sat down on the bench beside Sam, arms wrapped around herself, apparently even demons able to feel a cold this bone deep.

It was so typical. Their father had kept Dean on such a tight leash. That year had been a bad one for Sam, that first one away from them, full of regret and anger. But it had been worse for Dean, this much Sam had figured out in the last year or more — oblique references, things unsaid. Those damn phone messages, the sudden contact so wanted and so goddamn painful. What the fuck had happened? “He needed to tell me something. Around my birthday. Left a bunch of messages.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a question?”

Sam looked down to his hands, entwined between his knees. He chuffed a short laugh, surprised at his own capacity for being coy. “Yeah, Ruby. That’s a question.”

——

“He doesn’t want to see you, Dean!” John called out and it stopped Dean dead in his tracks because that had been said the first time, too. John had come away from the truck, was standing apart, hands held out slightly. “You chose this. Remember? You chose the road, and fighting the shit we fight. It’s a good life, son. You know it.” He took a step towards Dean, hand resting on the truck’s door, eyes cutting sideways to the passenger seat. “C’mon. It’s a long drive back to Colorado, kiddo.”

Those weren’t exactly the words said the first time, but they were close enough. It hadn’t been John’s words that had tipped the scales back then. It had been that look in his eyes, that longing, that need. He needs me, Dean thought, words like scalpels, cutting to the root. Sam’s okay where he is, and Dad needs me.

For one moment he stood very still, the shade of a tree barring the pavement between them, the door to the truck open, John’s right hand turned outwards, an invitation. Then, other memories: Sam in the Impala, weeping, the Niagara Falls bus terminal’s parking lot, his words choking on tears. We could keep driving. The two of us. Gas up and drive all the way to California. Toad falling, Dean, falling. A column of sand, turning on its axis like it was the world itself: Right decision for John, right decision for Sam. What about you, Winchester? Was it the right decision for you?

—-

She took a breath and Sam had time to brace himself. “They were in Vegas, and your dad fucked up and Dean—” She was enjoying this, Sam could feel her eyes on his neck and he glared at her suddenly.

“Shut up,” he barked, and she did. “I’ll ask him myself.”

She shrugged. “You can try.” The smile was unsettling, like so many things about her. “You can try, Sam. There’s things he’s never going to tell you about.”

It was the same thing as walking through a snake pit in bare feet. “Is he going to wake up?” Sam asked and Ruby got up, gave the impression of boredom.

“You figure it out, Sunny Jim. Like I said, ghosts are beneath me.” She paused, maybe weighing out what to give away, and what to keep. “Beneath you.”

She was halfway to the door, leaving in that way of hers that suggested humanity but never quite went all the way, when Sam’s temper blew. “We’re stronger than you think, Ruby!” he shouted, maybe for himself, maybe for her. Maybe for Dean, who couldn’t hear it. She stopped, turned around, arms still crossed, faking her chill, Sam was sure of it. This bitch hadn’t felt anything since Jesus was in diapers. “Dean and I? We’ve always been stronger together than apart. In the end, Dad knew it, too. You don’t get that, but I do.”

Those dimples again, man could get lost in them, but she wasn’t amused, not in any traditional sense. “I tell you what I do get. That brother of yours is going to make someone a really awesome weapon, Sam. You need to start seeing him in a whole new light.”

Sidling sideways, Ruby slipped through the door into the sunlight and by the time Sam crossed the bare barnboards, she was gone. Typical. Nothing good came of asking a demon questions, even a domesticated one. All the new information churned in him like he’d swallowed acid, and maybe he had, but it hadn’t done him any good. He was no further ahead. He’d been grasping at straws, he knew. Everything was always hinging on him, it seemed, and Sam remembered a couple of speeches Dean had given, most memorably beside the lake after that demonic virus scare in Oregon, about how the Winchesters were always giving, and never had anything for themselves. Sam had forgotten that, given what revelations had followed, but he came back to it now.

Some days, Sam might have agreed with Dean. But not today. Today, Sam Winchester was grateful for all he had, ephemeral and fleeting as it was, because it was pure, was like drinking sunlight. Was keen because it was so tenuous.

Not on my watch, Dean. Everything he’d said to Ruby was true, and maybe what she’d said was true as well. It didn’t really matter. Nobody was going to leave this time, not if Sam had something to say about it.

—-

The sunlight swam, and he couldn’t look at his father anymore. The door was open and Dean could go through. He wanted to believe that this was his father, that his father was holding open a door bigger and better than the truck’s, that it might be okay to just get in. I could just get in. I could just drive with him. It’s a good life, a good fight.

“Sam’s not all right,” he said, looking at his father.

John sighed, the dimples cutting deep as Sam’s ever had, hair dark and disheveled. Worn like an old jean jacket. “It’s okay to stop, Dean.”

John had never said that to him. Not in this life.

In many ways, it was just the same as Niagara Falls, a path diverging, and only one route really possible. There were things Dean kept hidden, even from himself, but this wasn’t one of them. “I’m sorry,” Dean whispered, more to himself than to John, whom he left standing in the parking lot, sunlight everywhere, the smell of ocean, of salt, enveloping them both. He turned away for a final time, crossed the parking lot and went through an archway into a broad leafy quadrangle where he knew he’d find his brother.

Dean never looked back, not once.

—-

Sam glanced at his watch, then slowly walked back to the house like he could hold time back. Joe had moved in circles, not straight lines, had made wide tracks that you’d need a map to follow, always leading home, but no one had understood that until it was too late. Dean had done the same thing, over and over and Sam had never really picked out the pattern until now, when the path had deviated. Now, and for months, Dean had been leaving in the most final way, had one foot on the train, one barely on the platform, and Sam had felt angry and helpless. No more.

He entered the house, crossed the silent woodsmoke-scented living room to the spare room, stared at Dean so still on the bed, bruises livid, pale and unmoving. Sam rested one hand on the iron bed frame, unable to go one step further. He sank to the floorboards, back against the mattress, fingers buried in his hair. “I’m right here, Dean,” he said softly to the space between his knees. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Outside the window, the wind whistled through the tall grass, turned the metal wheel atop its grim lattice, screeching out a prairie song. A mad argument broke out between the chickens as they scuffled in the yard. Inside, Sam heard a deep groan from the bed, the springs creaking as the body on it shifted.

“Shit, Sammy,” he heard Dean mutter indistinctly. “Every time.”

And something about weeds, but Sam was moving pretty fast right then, and must have imagined it.

—

I ought to be dead. But that was a common thought, right up there with, I like crunchy better than smooth. Still, better alive than the alternative. The bed wasn’t exactly comfortable, but that was mostly because his back was one big bruise and a spring had emerged from the mattress ticking like April’s first crocus, right where it could dig a groove in his shoulder. He’d dragged himself to upright in the last half hour, back now against the iron headboard, not much more comfortable than the mattress.

One thing for sure, though. He wasn’t having any of that crazy lady’s coffee, no matter how desperately he needed a caffeine jolt to wake up.

The police had arrived at the cemetery; a stolen backhoe and a disturbed grave tended to interest authorities, in Dean’s experience. It wouldn’t take much to put it all together, even for small town cops. Miss Sault’s lips clamped together as she peered out through the plastic sheeting covering the window, then gave Dean a sharp look as though holding him responsible. Man, wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of whatever she’s gonna serve up those cops, he thought.

Sam stopped at the threshold and Dean nodded to him. Sam was chancing a cup of something, but maybe he’d made it himself. Dean didn’t quite feel like finding his feet yet. Sitting up had been hard enough, especially since Doctor Sam Winchester had told him that he should stay prone. Prone. He’d actually used the word. Dean felt his chest, ran a hand across his face. A dream, maybe. Maybe. But he didn’t think so.

He’d woken up sweating, shaking. A few minutes of not understanding where the fuck he was, somewhere on the Stanford campus, somewhere in Nebraska. I walked away. I went through that archway, and I found Sam.

Who stared at him now, dark eyes unreadable from across the room. Sam looked like he needed a good sleep, like he’d spent the night with the motel’s minibar. Miss Sault tutted, and Dean knew somehow that it was over, that Sam had figured out how to get rid of Lewis — had taken his damn time about it, too.

“I’m going to see what they’re up to,” Miss Sault said, taking a quilted jacket down from a hook, the polyester filling leaking from a rip to either elbow. “You two stay put.”

Dean swallowed the automatic ‘yes ma’am’, but Sam didn’t. The door closed in the next room, but Sam didn’t budge from his stance in the doorway. Dean didn’t like that, knew that Sam was going to make him wait because that’s what Sam was good at, was a goddamn Shaolin master at it.

“She’s not going to rat us out,” Dean said. His boots were by the end of the bed, but it was too far to reach, so he sat quietly, elbows on knees, feeling every blow that Lewis had dealt.

“I know that,” Sam answered. He didn’t stir and Dean wished he’d come in because it hurt to turn his head to look at him.

“So, what happened?” Dean had to ask.

Sam told him, bare bones, and Dean nodded. There was stuff Sam was leaving out, but Dean knew it all had to do with how Sam felt about things, so that was okay as far as he was concerned. “Really? You double-crossed Lewis and pitched him down the hole? Man, that’s cold, even for you.” But he said it with a smile, which he expected Sam to return.

Sam didn’t.

“I don’t think anything I did brought you back.”

Dean dipped his head. “Sure it did,” he said, not wanting to say anything more, but knowing Sam would make him. Just like him, bastard.

“No, I didn’t do a damn thing. You were…gone.” And Sam gestured with one hand and Dean had to look away, because he was thinking of his brother un-tethered, set loose, alone, and it wasn’t something that he could entertain for long, for reasons that he was just beginning to guess.

“I was looking for you, if it’s any consolation.”

“I figured that out, thanks.” But Sam said it too fast.

“Fuck off, Sam.” Softly. No heat.

Sam was shaking his head, looked angry, but Dean was starting to see through that disguise, too. “I didn’t save you, Dean, not this time.”

“What makes you think I’m talking about this time?”

There was a silence and they stared at each other, shocked maybe. Full. Too full. A lifetime of saving and leaving and coming back and why it happened that way. It was too much, for the both of them.

Dean looked away first, he often did, wanted a joke to come, but he had nothing. He tried to ease himself off the bed, hated it when Sam cornered him into these discussions. Sam was by his elbow in a second, the cup of tea or coffee or whatever the fuck it was dropped messily to a stack of baled newspapers. Dean thought he heard Sam say something, but he wasn’t sure and he wasn’t going to ask. Sam took most of his weight, Dean leaning against him while the world swum before him.

Sam repeated it, probably knowing that Dean hadn’t heard him, didn’t want to hear him. “You don’t leave.”

And Dean wasn’t sure if that was a command or a question, or a prayer said so many times it was utterly meaningless. “You’re gonna be fine, Sam,” he replied, soft and without any thought or weight. It occurred to Dean then that maybe these two mantras were related, that one only existed because of the other. “But I hope like shit you’re the one who made the coffee, because I’m not gonna last without one.”

Sam got him to the kitchen table, poured out a mug from a pan on the stove. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t much more than a few hours old, which was saying something in this kitchen. After a half hour of silence, Miss Sault came back in, hair windswept, cheeks ruddy, eyes ablaze.

“Those cops couldn’t find their asses with both hands,” and dropped to the third chair by the uneven kitchen table. A runnel of spilled coffee ran in a slow circle. “Is that coffee, Sam? I take mine with cream, thanks.”

Dean winced around his cup. “What did you tell them?”

Sam set a mug down in front of her, then a can of condensed milk. She poured some in, used the reverse end of a dirty fork to stir it. “Said that I hadn’t heard a damn thing. I’m old, you know. They asked about that car of yours, so I said that you were my cousin’s grandsons visiting from college.” She shrugged. “That damned idiot professor was so happy when I said I’d give him an interview, he forgot all about the backhoe.” She peered hard at Dean. “They’ll want to question you, but they won’t figure that out until tomorrow morning. Idiots.” Her look was full of humor, but there was distance, too. “With a record like you probably have, I hope you’re across state lines by then.”

And finally, Sam smiled, and for that, Dean was grateful.

—-

“Ever think about working on a ranch? You know. A cattle drive?” Dean asked, almost at the same time as Sam was making a decision about whether or not they should take the 34 north of Denver, avoid the city altogether. Just about to veer away from Jack Kerouac territory onto the road leading through the Rockies to the sea. On the Road, Sam had just been thinking, or Grapes of Wrath?

He looked at Dean, then back at the road; the sun was low to the west and he had lost his sunglasses again. He couldn’t see Dean’s eyes. In fact, Sam had thought his brother had been asleep, because he’d been pretty quiet all the way from the Colorado border right through four counties. “Um, no,” he answered truthfully. What kind of dumb ass question was that?

“Right. You don’t like horses.”

Sam laughed, adjusting the visor. “Neither do you, if I remember correctly.”

“I like horses just fine,” Dean muttered and Sam realized that he honestly didn’t know how Dean felt about horses, among other things.

Dean sat up straighter, took off his sunglasses; they had pinched red marks to either side of his nose. He rubbed his bruised face, grimacing. “But those Cheyenne riders, just crossing this plain, back and forth, terrorizing the shit out of everyone? Pretty sweet life, you ask me.”

They’d been keeping pace with a long freight train for miles now, just to the south of the highway: hopper, hopper, boxcar. Now, they pulled out in front, the tracks veering away from the highway, heading to Denver maybe. Sam had no idea, but he knew Dean would tell him if he asked. His brother’s eyes were on it, flicking from car to car, maybe making some assessment using criteria unknown to Sam.

Talk of terrorizing the plains was an opening, of sorts. “So, where are we going?” Sam paused. “Vegas?” He slid a look sideways, trying to catch Dean out.

“Why?” Dean put the glasses back on. Shades. “You gotta number you want to play?”

Sam cleared his throat, kept his eyes on the road. “You called me a few times, after you were in Vegas. With Dad. About a year after I left. What was the deal?”

The silence was deep, but Sam could wait it out. The highway was a place where you could wait things out.

Above the steady comforting drone of the car, Sam heard Dean swallow. “I had some down time. You know.” Sam still didn’t say anything, let the yellow lines soothe all the rough edges. “I had a few weeks in the hospital, that’s all.”

Weeks. What it would take for Dean to break that John-imposed, year-long silence, what would make the good soldier go AWOL — Sam didn’t know, but he could guess. Not drunk, medicated. Scared out of his mind. Dad fucked up, she said.

And now, Sam sensed, Dean was giving him the road silence, letting the minutes tick by, every one precious.

“How hurt?” He glanced at Dean, who had pushed the sunglasses down his nose so he could look at Sam.

Dean made a face and angled away, right hand resting on his chin, elbow on the window sill. “Enough,” he said, and he might have been talking about anything. “It was enough to make me call.”

“I’m sorry.” Sam said immediately, like it had been waiting for years.

“You didn’t know,” in that easy, nevermind voice.

“No, I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“Woulda freaked me the fuck out if you had.” The hand came off the chin, gestured, returned. “You left a message in the end.” Like that had been enough, and maybe it had been for Dean. Maybe it had been all he had needed, knowing that Sam was there.

The road claimed the rest of the conversation, the tension leaching into the sun-baked, frost-cracked pavement. It was too beautiful a day for any recriminations or regrets and Sam felt too sore for it in any case. “I’ve been thinking…”

Dean made a noise in the base of his throat.

Sam ignored him. “I’ve been thinking. We should go out west.”

“Anywhere but California,” Dean interjected.

“Why not?” Sam demanded, the fingers of one hand coming off the wheel. “It’s sure as hell warmer than here, Dean.”

“Anywhere is warmer than East Armpit, Nebraska in February, Sam,” Dean pointed out. They rode in silence for a couple of miles, until a sign post advised them that a choice had to be made. “Denver sounds nice.”

“It does?” Sam said before he thought about it.

“Sure. They’ve been working on their marketing.” His attention was out the window when Sam looked, eyes steady on the horizon. “What a fucking amazing day.”

It wasn’t the sort of observation that Dean made often. Sam couldn’t look at him anymore, both the notion of safe driving and driving safely playing into it. “Sort of day that makes you glad to be alive,” Sam tested, driving carefully, if not safely.

He kept his eyes on the highway, noticed that the off-ramp for parts west was coming up fast.

He heard the breath Dean took. “Yeah. It makes you glad to be alive.”

The sun was right in Sam’s eyes. “I never thanked you.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m still glad to be here.”

They let that sit for a minute, and the sun smarted Sam’s eyes in the worst way, and he knew Dean would take that the way he would, which prolonged the silence. Dean was giving him a few minutes to get his shit together. It was ironic, because, for once, Sam’s shit was completely together; it was the sun that caused his eyes to water, nothing more. “So, Dean? West? Last chance,” and he pointed.

The car smelled of hot engine, the heater going overtime, the sun coming in so hard Sam almost couldn’t see the highway in front of him.

“Nah,” Dean murmured softly. The sun would be in his eyes too, but Sam wasn’t going to look, though he’d earned the right. The highway veered southwest, the angle of the sun now coming in obliquely, and the road to Utah and Nevada and California was left behind. Dean was still in the car, and the day was beautiful.

“Besides,” Dean said after a long time, “we’ll get a better deal on new tires in Denver.”

Sam did look then, and Dean had a wide smile on his face, eyes halfway closed against the coming sunset, a look of bemused capitulation on his face. “Tires?” Sam was mystified; if this was supposed to be a peace offering, it was going right by him.

“Yeah, maybe some all-season radials.” Dean nodded, crossed his arms, leaned back, closed his eyes all the way. “We’re going to need them.”

—-

-30-


A/N 1: Arlo Guthrie is singing “Last Train to Glory” in my head.
A/N 2: Part of this is a response to a challenge I set myself some time ago: Do Mary Sues have to be bad? Or is a ‘good’ Mary Sue simply a good OC? You decide.
A/N 3 (hey, I’m allowed three, it’s the final chapter): Many thanks to the birth mothers I’ve worked with over the years, who have taught me about losing children, and about what happens when a baby is buried with shame, not love.



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