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anactoriaTitle: Take Me To The Bridge
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anactoria
Characters: Dean, Sam, Cas, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Animal cruelty.
Word count: 23,000
Summary: It’s supposed to be a routine hunt. A few farm animals mutilated, a few towns over. It sounds like the work of some two-bit demon—just another day at the office for two experienced hunters and an angel.
But this case is closer to home than it seems. Before long, Dean is in the clutches of a dangerous spirit, and Sam and Cas must try to end an ancient family feud before the whole town—and Dean—gets caught in the crossfire.
“Here.” Cas materializes with a flutter of wings and sets a discolored glass vial on the table. “Water weed from the lakes of Cader Idris. The last ingredient.”
Sam looks up from his notes and takes the vial, holding it up to inspect. There’s a dessicated tangle of green in the bottom, fragile enough it looks like it might dissolve into powder at his touch.
The summoning isn’t much like any spell he’s used before, but with the professor’s translation, he’s ninety percent sure he’s gotten something figured out. The other ten percent is just desperate hope: that the spell will work, and that if he has made any mistakes here, they won’t bite him—or Dean—too hard in the ass.
Sam takes a breath. “Okay.”
He sets the notebook in the middle of the table and lights the candles. He doesn’t see Cas move, but the overhead light blinks out.
Sam tosses the contents of the vial into a bowl and adds the other ingredients. A blackened chunk of bone that gives an incongruous tinkle as he throws it in; a white feather; a drop of dark oil. He runs his knife across his palm, holds his hand above the bowl, and begins to read as his blood drips into it.
The words feel strange in his mouth, guttural and awkward, but he finishes the incantation.
There’s a long silence, afterward. The candle flames flicker briefly, then go still.
He glances across at Cas, who frowns and shakes his head, the lines in his face etched deeper by the candlelight.
“Awesome.” Sam gives a sigh, and opens his mouth to start reading again. Maybe he’ll be luck second time around.
There’s a gust of wind, the windows rattling in their frames. First one candle, then the other, gutters out, leaving them in darkness.
For a moment, there’s nothing. Even the sounds of cars passing the motel window seem muted and distant. The light of the neon orange sign outside no longer filters in through the blinds. Sam feels like he’s been blindfolded. He blinks hard.
Gradually, he sees the suggestion of a figure to his right. Cas, still standing beside him. The objects on the table come gradually into view, a faint silvery light picking out their edges.
“Sam,” he hears Cas say, a warning in his voice. Sam turns around.
There he is. One of the spirits from the woodland. A translucent figure with clear, pale eyes and an expression of perfect serenity on his face.
“Nisien,” Sam says.
The figure inclines his head. “You pronounced it correctly.” He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t often hear that, these days.” There’s a lilt to his accent that Sam can’t place, something as gentle as the rocking of waves on a summer day. It breathes warmth through the air, makes him yawn.
That’s enough to put Sam on the alert. He straightens up where he stands and looks hard at Nisien. “Thanks,” he says. “But, uh, we don’t have time for small talk.”
Nisien’s eyes dart around the room. They light briefly on Cas—who doesn’t seem affected by the weird soporific thing—and he raises an eyebrow. “An angel?” he says. “I didn’t realise, earlier.” He frowns in puzzlement. “What could one of you want from one of us?”
“You know what,” Sam says. He says it a little louder than necessary, doing his best to shake the last creeping shreds of sleepiness from his mind. “Your brother took my brother. We need you to help us save him.”
Nisien turns back to him and gives a resigned little smile. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can do,” he says. “You’ve encountered my brother, so you know how determined he can be when he sets his mind to something. And I haven’t been a warrior in a very long time. I never wanted to be one in the first place.”
“Actually,” Sam says, “that’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you.”
Nisien blinks back at him. His smile doesn’t waver. Somehow, that makes Sam feel more out of his depth than if Nisien just told them to go screw themselves. At least he’d know how to start arguing with that.
Sam does his best to ignore the smile. “Your brother’s been dead for thousands of years,” he says. “Which means that he should… move on. Leave this world behind. It’s the only way he’ll ever find peace.”
“Peace.” Nisien says the word slowly, as though it’s an alien concept—which, okay, in connection with his brother, it probably is.
“It’s what everybody wants in the end, isn’t it?” Sam presses. “Spirits stuck on earth lose their minds. Get caught in this… cycle of revenge. Your brother might have been a fighter when you guys were alive, but don’t you think he might want a chance to be something else after all this time? Don’t you all?”
Nisien doesn’t answer right away. He watches Sam’s face carefully, and after a moment the smile falls from his face; his eyes turn sharp and knowing.
Weird, but Sam finds that more comfortable to look at.
“The rest of us moved on long ago,” Nisien tells him. “The bridge to the Otherworld is open to us, should we need it—but we have our eternity.” He pauses. “But you weren’t really talking about my brother. Were you?”
He’s right. It isn’t fair. Sam hates it, that Dean spent so long fighting the Mark, that he nearly lost himself to it, and that now he’s back he’s being possessed by some bloodthirsty psycho. It makes Sam feel like he’s back at Square One, right where he was after Dean’s body disappeared, when he thought some demon was out there wearing his brother like a prom dress. He can’t keep the desperation of it from coming through in his voice, can’t help but feel the ache of it right in the center of his chest.
He may as well admit it. “So maybe your brother doesn’t want to move on. Maybe he’s too obsessed with whatever he’s trying to do here. That doesn’t mean my brother should have to suffer for it. Dean’s been through enough. Help me get him back.”
“I wish I could.” Nisien smiles again, but this time there’s no serenity in it, just regret. It makes him look more human.
“The lore says you could get men who were at war to sit down and listen to each other,” Sam points out. “You’re saying you can’t even talk your own brother into moving on? You can’t just—tell him you forgive him?”
Nisien drops his gaze.
“You never did,” Sam realises, his heart sinking. “Did you? Not even you.”
“Should we have to?” Nisien retorts. “I tried. I tried while he was alive—believe me, I did. He refused to listen then. He brought war down upon us. So many of the best men of our island died. An innocent child died. Brân and Branwen—our whole family torn apart.”
There’s sorrow in his eyes, and Sam thinks back to the story. Nisien disappears from the narrative after the battle. Sam had assumed that was because he’d gotten killed, but maybe not.
Maybe he just lost his faith. Maybe, after everything that happened, he wasn’t the guy who could reconcile two armies anymore.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Sam says. “I didn’t even—”
Nisien shakes his head. Raises his eyes—and there’s something wondering in the way he looks at Sam. “And yet you said ‘forgive him’ as though it was the most natural thing in the world,” he says. “How many wrongs have you had to forgive, Sam?”
Sam meets his eyes. Forces himself to hold their gaze. “About as many as I’ve done myself,” he says. “Look, I’m not saying we’re perfect at it. Dean’s screwed up. So have I. Some of the things I’ve done—I don’t think I have any right to judge anybody else. So neither of us is exactly a saint. But when we’re together, neither of us is exactly the devil, either. That makes it worth it. Forgiving things. Even when they’re hard to get past.”
He can hear an echo in his own voice. It isn’t so long ago that Dean gave him the same spiel—after that amazingly disgusting case at the health spa—and he was the one who walked away from it. It’s strange to find himself saying it, even stranger to find himself believing it.
Though if he’s honest, Sam knows there’s more to it. Being together, that’s one thing. If they could agree to take a step away from the dark together—well, that really would be worth it.
“The love of brothers,” Nisien says, slowly. “That was the heart of all I was, once. How long it has been since I truly felt it. Since I truly felt anything.” The look in his eyes grows distant. “All is peaceful, in the other world. All is calm. It’s always calling to me. Calling me home, lulling me back to sleep…” He trails off.
“You’re a coward.”
Sam starts and turns around. He’d almost forgotten Cas was standing behind him.
Cas’s voice is a low growl, thunder written across his face. “It’s true that you don’t belong on this earth anymore. Your otherworld—that’s your home. But you were a warrior, once. You protected people.”
Nisien nods, a faint, puzzled crease between his eyebrows.
“You desired peace, but you understood that evil exists in the world. That you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“I did.” Nisien’s voice is faint, uncertain.
“But when it wears your brother’s face, you turn and run from it. You would rather sleep than look at what he has done.” Cas’s scowl deepens, if that’s even possible. “There is nobody in this room who doesn’t know how that feels. Will you be the only one who gives up?”
Maybe it’s just the reflection of Nisien’s silvery glow, but Sam thinks there’s a pricking of white light in his eyes, like he’s ready to go full-on wrath-of-Heaven, ready to smite Nisien’s otherworldly ass. That isn’t something you see much of these days, and Sam takes an involuntary step back.
Nisien doesn’t seem fazed, though. Maybe he’s immune to angel powers. He just looks thoughtful, stares into space for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”
Sam blinks. “Yes, you’ll help us?”
“Don’t be mistaken. I don’t think this will work.” Nisien takes a step toward him, proffering one translucent, glowing hand. “But I should like to try. To feel something human again, before I go back to sleep.”
Sam hesitates a second, then shakes the outstretched hand. He expects to find himself grasping at air, or something cold and tingly, but instead it’s just a hand, solid and human. He holds onto it for a second, and then it dissolves back into incorporeality.
“So,” he says. “Where do we start?”
Nisien smiles. “Right here.”
----
Dean’s in the dark again.
Glowing Douchebag’s been quiet since their little heart-to-heart. He stayed hunkered down in the dank shithole where he woke up—which turned out to be an abandoned tunnel outside of town—for what felt like a couple hours, until the daylight outside began to fade. Then he headed out.
He moved differently from Dean. It felt weird being in the passenger seat, feeling his posture too stiff and his gait a little off, sending an ache up his left side. It took Dean a couple minutes to figure it out. Glowing Douchebag had a limp—not crippling, but definitely noticeable—from some wound Dean had never suffered. Must’ve been an old injury when he died, with the way he automatically favored one leg, even walking around in someone else’s body.
“So,” Dean said, eventually, not really sure that Glowing Douchebag was gonna answer, “what’s the field trip about?”
Brân, Glowing Douchebag said. Even though it was Dean’s body doing the walking, he sounded breathless, his voice heavy with rage. I will call Brân.
“Brân as in—wait.” Dean picked through his memory. He’d heard that name in the woods, right before Glowing Douchebag hopped a ride. And Glowing Douchebag had mentioned three brothers, but only two showed up when he called them. “Your other brother. The one who died in the battle.”
The King. The words dripped with disdain. The one who sent my sister away. He thought that he knew best, that he controlled us. My brothers still love him. My sister too—even after what he did to us—
“Buddy,” said Dean. “I’m pretty sure you screwed that one up all by yourself.”
Glowing Douchebag ignored him. I will summon him here, he said. The others will have no choice but to come. And this time, the battle will end only when we are all destroyed.
“Destroyed? As in, dead? Because buddy, I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure you’ve all been dead for a couple thousand years. And you can’t kill a ghost, just—send it through the veil.”
Perhaps that’s true of your spirits, mused Glowing Douchebag. But my brothers and sister and I—we were never entirely human. Our afterlife is not the same as yours. We have substance, of a kind. Destroy it outside the realm of Annwn, and the death is permanent. My brothers will have to take vessels to fight me. And then—then, they can be destroyed.
Realization dawned, and Dean’s heart sank. “You mean if somebody kills the poor sucker they’re possessing.”
Glowing Douchebag didn’t reply, and that was as much of a ‘yes’ as Dean needed.
If Glowing Douchebag was planning a full-scale battle—well, that could take out half the town. Even if it didn’t go that far, if it was just his brothers and sister, that was four innocent people in danger right off the bat.
Dean let the conversation lapse into silence, and made a mental note of his weapons. Gun tucked in the back of his pants, knife in his boot. If he could just make a grab for one of them next time Glowing Douchebag was distracted, then he could end this. It was simple, really.
He did his best to resist the impulse to reach back and touch the gun, just for reassurance. Didn’t want Glowing Douchebag to get a handle on his plan.
The sound of a voice distracted him.
Dean could tell it didn’t belong to anybody he knew, but he felt the familiarity of it, a tug in his bones.
Brother, it said. Brother. Come and talk with me.
Glowing Douchebag straightened up, listening hard to the night air.
Brother, Dean heard, again.
Nisien. Glowing Douchebag’s voice was a growl inside his head. He set off at a run. Dean felt the lurch of his legs moving without his permission—and then the darkness came down.
He’s trapped in it, now. He can’t speak, can’t move his hands, can’t grab for his gun. He struggles against Glowing Douchebag’s hold on his mind, but it just wraps around him more tightly.
If Glowing Douchebag gets his fight, Dean just hopes Sam and Cas aren’t dumb enough to walk into the middle of it.
Yeah, right. He struggles harder.
----
They’re back in the woods, in the clearing where Efnisien and his siblings showed up first time around. Sam’s tense, shotgun at the ready, though he doesn’t even know if rocksalt shells will work against the kind of spirits these guys are. He can’t use it against Efnisien anyway. Not while he has Dean.
If Efnisien even shows, which he hasn’t yet. Sam couldn’t exactly hear Nisien calling him—some kind of psychic thing, he guesses—but Cas winced like a clap of thunder had just broken right over his head, and Sam felt the hairs prickle on his arms and the back of his neck.
Now, they wait.
He glances at Nisien, who has his serene mask back in place. No way of telling whether he’s actually disappointed or not. “Try again?” Sam suggests.
Nisien shrugs and says nothing.
That’s when Sam hears it. Footsteps. Solid, human footsteps, coming toward them at a run.
Their owner stumbles to a halt a little way into the clearing. Not close enough for them to make out his face in the dim light but Sam doesn’t need it.
“Dean!” He’s moving before his brain catches up to his feet, and only Cas’s vise-like grip on his arm keeps him from running over there.
Cas gives a minute shake of his head, warning in his eyes. Sam grits his teeth and nods.
This isn’t Dean. Or at least, Dean isn’t in the driver’s seat right now.
“Brother. You called.”
It’s a sneer, spoken in Dean’s voice but with a silky contempt entirely alien to him. Dean’s face twists with hatred, and watching it makes Sam’s insides knot up with dread. Images flash unbidden before his eyes. Dean looking at him like a stranger. Like a target. The smell of blood in the air. The Blade in Dean’s hand. How dark his eyes were.
This isn’t Dean. Sam clenches the fist of his free hand, nails digging into his palms. This isn’t Dean.
It’s still a struggle to hang back as Nisien steps out into the clearing. “I did,” he says, his eyes fixed unswervingly on Efnisien. “And you know why.”
Efnisien moves to join him, raising an eyebrow. There are tiny pinpricks of light in his eyes—in Dean’s eyes—and Sam has to look away for a moment, swallowing hard.
Cas’s grip tightens on his shoulder. “Wait,” he says, quietly. “Let him try.”
“I know why,” Efnisien echoes. “Because you’re afraid of me.”
Nisien cocks his head. “What do we have to fear?” he asks. “You did your worst a long time ago, brother. What you do in this world, you do to mortal men. Not us.”
“And you let me do it. You’ll let me destroy this town, let them all die—peacemaker?”
Nisien holds out his hands, palms up. “Why destroy anything here? What purpose could it serve?” His voice is gentle.
“To make you see me. You, and the rest of them. I’ll do it.” Efnisien reaches into his—Dean’s—jacket pocket, and pulls out a paper bag.
The inhuman light shines brighter in Dean’s eyes, now. Silver swirls around his face, his hands, washes all the color out of his skin. He sinks into the uncanny valley, right there before Sam’s eyes.
Efnisien tips the contents of the bag onto the floor. Sam squints at them in the growing light. A hunk of bone. Dried-out plant matter. A feather.
It’s a summoning spell, just like the one they used to summon Nisien.
“He wouldn’t come when I called,” Efnisien shouts. “Brân. He always thought he was better than the rest of us, just because he was the eldest. Well, he knew nothing! He took her from me!” There’s a note of hysteria in his voice. It’s turning hoarse, ragged. It isn’t Dean, Sam knows it isn’t Dean, but it still makes something clench up painfully beneath his ribcage. “And the rest of you went along with it! You always hated me. Now you’ll all have to stand up and fight me.”
“Brother.” Nisien’s voice is soft, resonant with sorrow. It rings through the clearing and makes it feel like it’s full of quiet, cut off from the rest of the world. Efnisien abandons his tirade and goes quiet. “I never hated you. None of us did.” Nisien steps forward, offering a hand. “I don’t think we ever understood you—but if you came with us, stopped all this? We could try. We could all try. Why not give us a chance? Let us give you a chance?”
Efnisien hesitates. Looks at his brother, wild-eyed. Sam sees that expression on Dean’s face, and it’s like having all the breath punched out of him. He can’t help but remember the last time he saw it for real.
In that barn, after the fight with Cain. Sam had been so afraid that Dean was lost the second he stepped inside those doors. That he wouldn’t be himself when he emerged. And he wasn’t. It was just that Sam took too long to see it.
Efnisien hesitates for a second. Then he shakes his—Dean’s—head, and shouts, “No! No, you’ll only leave me again. You all will.”
He pulls something else out of a pocket, and Sam recognizes the gleam of Dean’s lighter in the silvery light. Efnisien flicks it once, twice. The spark catches, and he tosses it onto the pile of spell ingredients.
He begins to recite something. Measured and hypnotic, the words half-familiar even though they’re in a language Sam doesn’t know, one that sounds heavy and alien coming out of Dean’s mouth.
Sam recognizes enough to know that it’s a summoning incantation. Almost the same as the one he used earlier, to summon Nisien.
Who, right now, still stands in front of his brother, one hand held out in that beseeching gesture. He doesn’t move when Efnisien starts to chant. The resignation settles back into the lines of his face, aging him a dozen years in the space of a few words.
Sam turns to Cas. “I think we’re done waiting,” he says.
“Agreed.” A blink of an eye, a disturbance in the air, and then Cas is standing behind Efnisien—behind Dean, with the creepy silver light still glowing in his eyes. Sam darts forward, levelling the shotgun at the space above the fire, where whatever Efnisien just summoned is presumably going to appear.
That’s when he feels it. The same thing they felt last night, when they tracked Spalls here. That sensation in the air. A rushing, a pressure, like something vast bearing down on them…
Nisien cranes his neck to peer through the trees. Efnisien looks up, his rapturous expression even more unsettling on Dean’s face than wild-eyed desperation. Sam knows he should look up, find out what they’re dealing with here, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Dean’s face.
Then there’s somebody standing in front of him.
Sam takes a step back and blinks.
It isn’t one of the translucent ghostly figures from last night. It’s Mrs. Sefton from the farm. She’s dressed in a bathrobe and pajama pants, fluffy white slippers on her feet, and her eyes glow with ghostly silver.
As Sam stares, the translucent shape of a white bird circles toward her and comes to rest on her shoulder.
Crap.
He turns on the spot. Sure enough, it isn’t just Branwen who’s shown up with a brand new borrowed body. There’s a guy who Sam vaguely recognizes from the sheriff’s office—their first port of call before the Sefton ranch—with his own set of glowing eyes. Must be the other brother, Manawydan.
And there’s someone else. Something else, Sam thinks at first, because the shadowy presence that looms over them is more mountain than man. The boughs of the trees move as he passes. There’s no way this guy is possessing a living person. He’s translucent, like all the others were first time around, but Sam gets a sense of mass, of solidity, just looking at him.
Brân. The eldest brother; the King.
These aren’t just any spirits. They’re the heroes, the mythological figures—hell, the demi-gods—of their mythology. Maybe literally. Sam’s read theories about how gods diminish with age, as people stop believing in them and eventually even reading their stories. Even the little asswipe fairies that abducted Dean were gods, once.
Sam pushes the rest of that memory away. Even if he had time for it now, there are parts of it—parts of him in it—that he doesn’t like to think about.
So maybe Brân is nobody’s god anymore, but he’s still a colossus to his brothers and sisters. It’s like their ghostly memories are enough to make him more than a man. No wonder he’s the one Efnisien wants to pick a fight with.
If Efnisien were less of a psycho, Sam might even admire his balls. There’s something about the way his eyes light up when they land on Brân that’s painfully Dean-like. Dean years ago, before the grinding relentlessness of the struggle crushed all the joy out of him. The way he used to grin and crack jokes before a fight. The give-‘em-hell attitude before it got turned into a life-is-hell attitude.
The expression on his face is both familiar and so unexpected it’s like something from another life, and it aches.
“Brân.” It doesn’t even sound like Dean anymore. There’s something else that resonates in it, a frequency that Cas cocks his head at but Sam can’t hear.
Cas stands poised just behind Dean, ready to grab him by the shoulders, but he catches Sam’s eye and Sam shakes his head. They’re outnumbered now, and they don’t know what these guys are capable of. For all they know, the others might just decide to take Efnisien down if things go south, and Dean’s still standing in the crossfire with a target on his forehead. They can’t risk it.
Brother.
Brân’s voice isn’t even a voice at all, really. It’s something Sam feels in his bones, rumbling up from the earth. The kind of voice rocks or trees might speak with.
What do you want with me?
“You know what I want!”
We haven’t known you for a long time, brother.
“You know. You still know.” Efnisien spins around and Dean’s eyes light on Branwen, alight with desperation. “She knows.”
‘She’ stays silent, looking back at him with accusing eyes.
You want us to fight you? Brân asks. Why?
“You hate me so much?” Efnisien spits back, Dean’s face twisting in fury. “Then destroy me!”
Sam takes an involuntary step forward, and he sees Cas do the same. The ghostly siblings don’t even react, apparently too caught up in their own drama to pay attention to what’s going on around them.
We never hated you, brother. There’s sorrow in it. Old, slow sorrow, seeping into Brân’s voice like water filtering through rock. I forgive you. Come with us.
Brân gestures with one shadowy hand, and Sam’s breath catches in his throat.
The path into the woods is gone. Where it stood, there’s just blackness—and a bridge, woven out of silvery thread, suspended above the void. It stretches so far into the distance that Sam can’t see the other side. There’s a hum in the air, making the hairs on his arms rise.
Let the human go, says Brân. Come with us.
Nisien chimes in. I forgive you, he says. Come with us.
Manawydan. “So do I. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be this. You never did.”
Efnisien turns to look at one, then the other. There’s confusion cutting through his anger, now. He reaches for the gun tucked into the back of Dean’s waistband, then hesitates, fingers fluttering in the air.
That’s when Branwen steps forward.
They just stare at each other for a moment. It’s uncomfortable watching Efnisien’s expressions cross Dean’s face. The fear there. The hope.
A long moment passes before Branwen speaks. “You killed my son, brother,” she says, her voice in a different register from Mrs. Sefton’s. “There is no forgiving that.” She watches his face as it sinks in. Then she holds out a hand. “But I love you still. Continuing to kill innocents—that would be more unforgiveable still. Come with us.”
She inclines her head toward the bridge, and Dean’s eyes follow her. Her words hang in the air like a promise.
Sam swallows. His throat feels dry, but he screws up his courage and gets out, “You know, you should listen to your sister.”
Abruptly, silently, all five of the ghostly siblings turn to look at him. Their glowing-eyed regard is disconcerting—especially the part of it that’s coming from Dean’s eyes. Sam reminds himself (hopes) that Dean is still in there somewhere, and ploughs on.
“I mean, me and my brother? We’ve done some pretty crappy things to each other over the years. We’ve got issues; I’m not saying we don’t. But if I just held onto all of that, forever? I’m pretty sure it would’ve killed me by now.” He takes a deep breath, fixes his eyes on Dean’s face. Tries to will away the ghostly light shining out of them. “It’s never too late to start over. Not if you really want to.”
“He’s right,” Cas chimes in, quietly. “It’s time you rested.”
Sam could swear that he sees Efnisien waver. His eyes dart between their faces—Sam’s and Cas’s, and those of all his siblings. He finds Branwen’s eyes and stares at her for the longest time, his anguish written across Dean’s face.
Then his eyes harden.
Sam feels dread like a stone in his gut. Cas goes tense, ready to grab him, but before he can do so, Efnisien makes a gesture over the fire. The flames flare up, bright, actinic white. Efnisien begins to speak. It’s a new incantation, and the words are unfamiliar, but Sam doesn’t need to understand them to know they don’t mean anything good. There’s a charge in the air, prickling down the back of his neck.
Efnisien makes another gesture. His voice rises in pitch.
And then he falters.
His expression turns bewildered, his mouth moving around words that make no sound. Then his face changes. The silver light in Dean’s eyes dims.
And oh, shit, Sam knows that expression. It’s Dean, and Dean alone. It’s Dean about to do something really stupid.
It happens so fast Sam only has time to make an aborted step forward, his mouth open around Dean’s name. He doesn’t even hear himself say it. There’s something in Dean’s free hand: something bright and metallic.
Dean gives a full-body shudder, like he’s fighting with himself. He goes stiff, and for a moment, Sam’s terrified that Efnisien is back in control.
Then Dean wrenches his arm free and buries the knife in his gut.
----
There are faces looming over Dean. They’re kinda fuzzy, but he knows who they are. He isn’t that far gone. Yet.
Ghostly voices wash over him. Efnisien, they say—because apparently that’s Glowing Douchebag’s name. Dean still thinks Glowing Douchebag suits him better. Brother.
He reaches up and tries to shove them away, but he’s weak, and he ends up just flapping his hands ineffectually. He doesn’t want them. He wants his family.
The spirits are looking at him, but it isn’t really him they’re looking at. Brother, they say, and Dean tries to tell them to get fucked, he isn’t theirs, but the words won’t come out right and they just ignore him anyway.
Brother, they say again. Come with us. Then a few words spoken in a language Dean doesn’t understand. It’s the big guy’s voice, Brân, and it must be some kind of a spell, because Dean feels something. An uncoupling. That dark web breaks up and drifts away, stops trying to wrap itself around his mind.
When Glowing Douchebag checks out, it’s the opposite of a weight off of his shoulders. Whatever’s been keeping him conscious lifts out of him, and he can’t move his limbs and he’s pierced through with cold. It’s deep in his guts. He looks down and there’s a dark stain on the front of his shirt.
Oh, yeah. He stabbed himself. That’s gonna hurt.
The faces turn away from him. Yes, they say. Their voices fade, echoing like he’s hearing them across a vast distance. Yes, come with us.
And then they’re there. Sammy. Cas. Dean’s own family, kneeling beside him, their faces shadowed with concern.
“Dean!” Sam’s voice is too loud. It hurts his head. “Jesus, Dean, what were you thinking?”
“Hey,” he tries to say, “it worked, didn’t it?” but it doesn’t really come out, the syllables slurring into one another.
“Don’t talk,” Sam says, hand on his shoulder. Solid. Present.
Then Cas touches two fingers to his forehead, and everything goes mercifully black.
----
He lurches awake once on the drive back to the motel, sliding across the backseat because Sam doesn’t know how to take a corner.
Shadows crawl at the edges of his vision. When he blinks, he sees the negative image of that bridge stretching across the void, hears echoing voices. Come with us. Come with us. Come.
He rubs at his eyes and tries to sit up. Cas’s hand lands on his shoulder, not letting him. “Hold still,” he says. “I’ve healed the stab wound, but you’ll be weak for a little while. Rest.”
“’M not weak,” Dean protests, and shoves ineffectually at Cas’s arm. It doesn’t move, and the darkness crawls back up to meet him.
Come with us. Come with us.
Their faces keep floating over him. Glowing Douchebag’s brothers and sister, their voices joining together like a lullaby. Even Branwen, who flat-out said that the crap he’d pulled was unforgivable. The bird on her shoulder watches with flat, unwavering eyes, but she says, Come with us.
Dean doesn’t get it. Glowing Douchebag didn’t deserve any of that. They should’ve let Dean bleed out and left Glowing Douchebag to die along with him. But they won’t leave him alone. Their concerned faces, their soft, encouraging voices. He tries to cover his eyes with his hands, but he can’t shut them out.
Next time he wakes up, it’s Sam’s face hovering over him.
He squints and sits up on the motel bed. “Dude,” he grumbles. “Get outta my face, that’s creepy.”
Sam grins. “So you’re feeling better.”
“Fuckin’ A.” He takes a look around the room. “Where’s Cas?”
“Back in the woods. He’s gonna hang around there for a while, make sure that bridge closed up after they took Efnisien back to Annwn.”
Dean frowns. “Where?” He pauses. “Wait, never mind, I don’t care. We got any beers?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Sam turns away to root through their stuff, and somehow it’s easier to ask the back of his head, “Why’d you think they did it?”
“Did what?”
“You know.” Dean shifts on the bed, but he can’t get comfy. “Took him back, after all the crap he’d done. I mean, he offed his sister’s kid. You don’t earn forgiveness for things like that.”
For a moment, the line of Sam’s shoulder’s stiffens. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know, man,” he says. “I mean, they weren’t even completely human, I don’t think. Maybe their brains don’t work like ours. But if I had to guess? Maybe he wasn’t always that way. Maybe they knew there was good in him, once, and they chose to believe there could be again.”
“Yeah.” Dean frowns. “Or maybe they just felt guilty.”
“Could be.” There’s a clink of bottles, and Sam turns around, beers in hand. “Or, I dunno, maybe they wanted to prove him wrong. I mean, he screwed up big time. I’m not saying he didn’t.” He twists the cap off one bottle, then the other, and passes one of them to Dean. “But did that mean he was doomed to just go around doing evil for the rest of his life? That he didn’t have a choice? I wouldn’t wanna believe that.”
Sam lapses into silence. Dean turns his head and finds that Sam isn’t looking at him, his eyes fixed on some point on the opposite wall.
“Yeah, well,” Dean says. “Who the fuck knows? Just as long as they don’t take any family holidays back here anytime soon.”
That gets a faint smile from Sam. He turns back, leans over to clink his beer bottle against Dean’s. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll drink to that.”
Dean settles back against the headboard. He’s only halfway down his beer when he finds his eyes closing again.
This time, at least, his dreams are empty.
Epilogue
Author:
anactoriaCharacters: Dean, Sam, Cas, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Animal cruelty.
Word count: 23,000
Summary: It’s supposed to be a routine hunt. A few farm animals mutilated, a few towns over. It sounds like the work of some two-bit demon—just another day at the office for two experienced hunters and an angel.
But this case is closer to home than it seems. Before long, Dean is in the clutches of a dangerous spirit, and Sam and Cas must try to end an ancient family feud before the whole town—and Dean—gets caught in the crossfire.
“Here.” Cas materializes with a flutter of wings and sets a discolored glass vial on the table. “Water weed from the lakes of Cader Idris. The last ingredient.”
Sam looks up from his notes and takes the vial, holding it up to inspect. There’s a dessicated tangle of green in the bottom, fragile enough it looks like it might dissolve into powder at his touch.
The summoning isn’t much like any spell he’s used before, but with the professor’s translation, he’s ninety percent sure he’s gotten something figured out. The other ten percent is just desperate hope: that the spell will work, and that if he has made any mistakes here, they won’t bite him—or Dean—too hard in the ass.
Sam takes a breath. “Okay.”
He sets the notebook in the middle of the table and lights the candles. He doesn’t see Cas move, but the overhead light blinks out.
Sam tosses the contents of the vial into a bowl and adds the other ingredients. A blackened chunk of bone that gives an incongruous tinkle as he throws it in; a white feather; a drop of dark oil. He runs his knife across his palm, holds his hand above the bowl, and begins to read as his blood drips into it.
The words feel strange in his mouth, guttural and awkward, but he finishes the incantation.
There’s a long silence, afterward. The candle flames flicker briefly, then go still.
He glances across at Cas, who frowns and shakes his head, the lines in his face etched deeper by the candlelight.
“Awesome.” Sam gives a sigh, and opens his mouth to start reading again. Maybe he’ll be luck second time around.
There’s a gust of wind, the windows rattling in their frames. First one candle, then the other, gutters out, leaving them in darkness.
For a moment, there’s nothing. Even the sounds of cars passing the motel window seem muted and distant. The light of the neon orange sign outside no longer filters in through the blinds. Sam feels like he’s been blindfolded. He blinks hard.
Gradually, he sees the suggestion of a figure to his right. Cas, still standing beside him. The objects on the table come gradually into view, a faint silvery light picking out their edges.
“Sam,” he hears Cas say, a warning in his voice. Sam turns around.
There he is. One of the spirits from the woodland. A translucent figure with clear, pale eyes and an expression of perfect serenity on his face.
“Nisien,” Sam says.
The figure inclines his head. “You pronounced it correctly.” He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t often hear that, these days.” There’s a lilt to his accent that Sam can’t place, something as gentle as the rocking of waves on a summer day. It breathes warmth through the air, makes him yawn.
That’s enough to put Sam on the alert. He straightens up where he stands and looks hard at Nisien. “Thanks,” he says. “But, uh, we don’t have time for small talk.”
Nisien’s eyes dart around the room. They light briefly on Cas—who doesn’t seem affected by the weird soporific thing—and he raises an eyebrow. “An angel?” he says. “I didn’t realise, earlier.” He frowns in puzzlement. “What could one of you want from one of us?”
“You know what,” Sam says. He says it a little louder than necessary, doing his best to shake the last creeping shreds of sleepiness from his mind. “Your brother took my brother. We need you to help us save him.”
Nisien turns back to him and gives a resigned little smile. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can do,” he says. “You’ve encountered my brother, so you know how determined he can be when he sets his mind to something. And I haven’t been a warrior in a very long time. I never wanted to be one in the first place.”
“Actually,” Sam says, “that’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you.”
Nisien blinks back at him. His smile doesn’t waver. Somehow, that makes Sam feel more out of his depth than if Nisien just told them to go screw themselves. At least he’d know how to start arguing with that.
Sam does his best to ignore the smile. “Your brother’s been dead for thousands of years,” he says. “Which means that he should… move on. Leave this world behind. It’s the only way he’ll ever find peace.”
“Peace.” Nisien says the word slowly, as though it’s an alien concept—which, okay, in connection with his brother, it probably is.
“It’s what everybody wants in the end, isn’t it?” Sam presses. “Spirits stuck on earth lose their minds. Get caught in this… cycle of revenge. Your brother might have been a fighter when you guys were alive, but don’t you think he might want a chance to be something else after all this time? Don’t you all?”
Nisien doesn’t answer right away. He watches Sam’s face carefully, and after a moment the smile falls from his face; his eyes turn sharp and knowing.
Weird, but Sam finds that more comfortable to look at.
“The rest of us moved on long ago,” Nisien tells him. “The bridge to the Otherworld is open to us, should we need it—but we have our eternity.” He pauses. “But you weren’t really talking about my brother. Were you?”
He’s right. It isn’t fair. Sam hates it, that Dean spent so long fighting the Mark, that he nearly lost himself to it, and that now he’s back he’s being possessed by some bloodthirsty psycho. It makes Sam feel like he’s back at Square One, right where he was after Dean’s body disappeared, when he thought some demon was out there wearing his brother like a prom dress. He can’t keep the desperation of it from coming through in his voice, can’t help but feel the ache of it right in the center of his chest.
He may as well admit it. “So maybe your brother doesn’t want to move on. Maybe he’s too obsessed with whatever he’s trying to do here. That doesn’t mean my brother should have to suffer for it. Dean’s been through enough. Help me get him back.”
“I wish I could.” Nisien smiles again, but this time there’s no serenity in it, just regret. It makes him look more human.
“The lore says you could get men who were at war to sit down and listen to each other,” Sam points out. “You’re saying you can’t even talk your own brother into moving on? You can’t just—tell him you forgive him?”
Nisien drops his gaze.
“You never did,” Sam realises, his heart sinking. “Did you? Not even you.”
“Should we have to?” Nisien retorts. “I tried. I tried while he was alive—believe me, I did. He refused to listen then. He brought war down upon us. So many of the best men of our island died. An innocent child died. Brân and Branwen—our whole family torn apart.”
There’s sorrow in his eyes, and Sam thinks back to the story. Nisien disappears from the narrative after the battle. Sam had assumed that was because he’d gotten killed, but maybe not.
Maybe he just lost his faith. Maybe, after everything that happened, he wasn’t the guy who could reconcile two armies anymore.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Sam says. “I didn’t even—”
Nisien shakes his head. Raises his eyes—and there’s something wondering in the way he looks at Sam. “And yet you said ‘forgive him’ as though it was the most natural thing in the world,” he says. “How many wrongs have you had to forgive, Sam?”
Sam meets his eyes. Forces himself to hold their gaze. “About as many as I’ve done myself,” he says. “Look, I’m not saying we’re perfect at it. Dean’s screwed up. So have I. Some of the things I’ve done—I don’t think I have any right to judge anybody else. So neither of us is exactly a saint. But when we’re together, neither of us is exactly the devil, either. That makes it worth it. Forgiving things. Even when they’re hard to get past.”
He can hear an echo in his own voice. It isn’t so long ago that Dean gave him the same spiel—after that amazingly disgusting case at the health spa—and he was the one who walked away from it. It’s strange to find himself saying it, even stranger to find himself believing it.
Though if he’s honest, Sam knows there’s more to it. Being together, that’s one thing. If they could agree to take a step away from the dark together—well, that really would be worth it.
“The love of brothers,” Nisien says, slowly. “That was the heart of all I was, once. How long it has been since I truly felt it. Since I truly felt anything.” The look in his eyes grows distant. “All is peaceful, in the other world. All is calm. It’s always calling to me. Calling me home, lulling me back to sleep…” He trails off.
“You’re a coward.”
Sam starts and turns around. He’d almost forgotten Cas was standing behind him.
Cas’s voice is a low growl, thunder written across his face. “It’s true that you don’t belong on this earth anymore. Your otherworld—that’s your home. But you were a warrior, once. You protected people.”
Nisien nods, a faint, puzzled crease between his eyebrows.
“You desired peace, but you understood that evil exists in the world. That you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“I did.” Nisien’s voice is faint, uncertain.
“But when it wears your brother’s face, you turn and run from it. You would rather sleep than look at what he has done.” Cas’s scowl deepens, if that’s even possible. “There is nobody in this room who doesn’t know how that feels. Will you be the only one who gives up?”
Maybe it’s just the reflection of Nisien’s silvery glow, but Sam thinks there’s a pricking of white light in his eyes, like he’s ready to go full-on wrath-of-Heaven, ready to smite Nisien’s otherworldly ass. That isn’t something you see much of these days, and Sam takes an involuntary step back.
Nisien doesn’t seem fazed, though. Maybe he’s immune to angel powers. He just looks thoughtful, stares into space for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”
Sam blinks. “Yes, you’ll help us?”
“Don’t be mistaken. I don’t think this will work.” Nisien takes a step toward him, proffering one translucent, glowing hand. “But I should like to try. To feel something human again, before I go back to sleep.”
Sam hesitates a second, then shakes the outstretched hand. He expects to find himself grasping at air, or something cold and tingly, but instead it’s just a hand, solid and human. He holds onto it for a second, and then it dissolves back into incorporeality.
“So,” he says. “Where do we start?”
Nisien smiles. “Right here.”
Dean’s in the dark again.
Glowing Douchebag’s been quiet since their little heart-to-heart. He stayed hunkered down in the dank shithole where he woke up—which turned out to be an abandoned tunnel outside of town—for what felt like a couple hours, until the daylight outside began to fade. Then he headed out.
He moved differently from Dean. It felt weird being in the passenger seat, feeling his posture too stiff and his gait a little off, sending an ache up his left side. It took Dean a couple minutes to figure it out. Glowing Douchebag had a limp—not crippling, but definitely noticeable—from some wound Dean had never suffered. Must’ve been an old injury when he died, with the way he automatically favored one leg, even walking around in someone else’s body.
“So,” Dean said, eventually, not really sure that Glowing Douchebag was gonna answer, “what’s the field trip about?”
Brân, Glowing Douchebag said. Even though it was Dean’s body doing the walking, he sounded breathless, his voice heavy with rage. I will call Brân.
“Brân as in—wait.” Dean picked through his memory. He’d heard that name in the woods, right before Glowing Douchebag hopped a ride. And Glowing Douchebag had mentioned three brothers, but only two showed up when he called them. “Your other brother. The one who died in the battle.”
The King. The words dripped with disdain. The one who sent my sister away. He thought that he knew best, that he controlled us. My brothers still love him. My sister too—even after what he did to us—
“Buddy,” said Dean. “I’m pretty sure you screwed that one up all by yourself.”
Glowing Douchebag ignored him. I will summon him here, he said. The others will have no choice but to come. And this time, the battle will end only when we are all destroyed.
“Destroyed? As in, dead? Because buddy, I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure you’ve all been dead for a couple thousand years. And you can’t kill a ghost, just—send it through the veil.”
Perhaps that’s true of your spirits, mused Glowing Douchebag. But my brothers and sister and I—we were never entirely human. Our afterlife is not the same as yours. We have substance, of a kind. Destroy it outside the realm of Annwn, and the death is permanent. My brothers will have to take vessels to fight me. And then—then, they can be destroyed.
Realization dawned, and Dean’s heart sank. “You mean if somebody kills the poor sucker they’re possessing.”
Glowing Douchebag didn’t reply, and that was as much of a ‘yes’ as Dean needed.
If Glowing Douchebag was planning a full-scale battle—well, that could take out half the town. Even if it didn’t go that far, if it was just his brothers and sister, that was four innocent people in danger right off the bat.
Dean let the conversation lapse into silence, and made a mental note of his weapons. Gun tucked in the back of his pants, knife in his boot. If he could just make a grab for one of them next time Glowing Douchebag was distracted, then he could end this. It was simple, really.
He did his best to resist the impulse to reach back and touch the gun, just for reassurance. Didn’t want Glowing Douchebag to get a handle on his plan.
The sound of a voice distracted him.
Dean could tell it didn’t belong to anybody he knew, but he felt the familiarity of it, a tug in his bones.
Brother, it said. Brother. Come and talk with me.
Glowing Douchebag straightened up, listening hard to the night air.
Brother, Dean heard, again.
Nisien. Glowing Douchebag’s voice was a growl inside his head. He set off at a run. Dean felt the lurch of his legs moving without his permission—and then the darkness came down.
He’s trapped in it, now. He can’t speak, can’t move his hands, can’t grab for his gun. He struggles against Glowing Douchebag’s hold on his mind, but it just wraps around him more tightly.
If Glowing Douchebag gets his fight, Dean just hopes Sam and Cas aren’t dumb enough to walk into the middle of it.
Yeah, right. He struggles harder.
They’re back in the woods, in the clearing where Efnisien and his siblings showed up first time around. Sam’s tense, shotgun at the ready, though he doesn’t even know if rocksalt shells will work against the kind of spirits these guys are. He can’t use it against Efnisien anyway. Not while he has Dean.
If Efnisien even shows, which he hasn’t yet. Sam couldn’t exactly hear Nisien calling him—some kind of psychic thing, he guesses—but Cas winced like a clap of thunder had just broken right over his head, and Sam felt the hairs prickle on his arms and the back of his neck.
Now, they wait.
He glances at Nisien, who has his serene mask back in place. No way of telling whether he’s actually disappointed or not. “Try again?” Sam suggests.
Nisien shrugs and says nothing.
That’s when Sam hears it. Footsteps. Solid, human footsteps, coming toward them at a run.
Their owner stumbles to a halt a little way into the clearing. Not close enough for them to make out his face in the dim light but Sam doesn’t need it.
“Dean!” He’s moving before his brain catches up to his feet, and only Cas’s vise-like grip on his arm keeps him from running over there.
Cas gives a minute shake of his head, warning in his eyes. Sam grits his teeth and nods.
This isn’t Dean. Or at least, Dean isn’t in the driver’s seat right now.
“Brother. You called.”
It’s a sneer, spoken in Dean’s voice but with a silky contempt entirely alien to him. Dean’s face twists with hatred, and watching it makes Sam’s insides knot up with dread. Images flash unbidden before his eyes. Dean looking at him like a stranger. Like a target. The smell of blood in the air. The Blade in Dean’s hand. How dark his eyes were.
This isn’t Dean. Sam clenches the fist of his free hand, nails digging into his palms. This isn’t Dean.
It’s still a struggle to hang back as Nisien steps out into the clearing. “I did,” he says, his eyes fixed unswervingly on Efnisien. “And you know why.”
Efnisien moves to join him, raising an eyebrow. There are tiny pinpricks of light in his eyes—in Dean’s eyes—and Sam has to look away for a moment, swallowing hard.
Cas’s grip tightens on his shoulder. “Wait,” he says, quietly. “Let him try.”
“I know why,” Efnisien echoes. “Because you’re afraid of me.”
Nisien cocks his head. “What do we have to fear?” he asks. “You did your worst a long time ago, brother. What you do in this world, you do to mortal men. Not us.”
“And you let me do it. You’ll let me destroy this town, let them all die—peacemaker?”
Nisien holds out his hands, palms up. “Why destroy anything here? What purpose could it serve?” His voice is gentle.
“To make you see me. You, and the rest of them. I’ll do it.” Efnisien reaches into his—Dean’s—jacket pocket, and pulls out a paper bag.
The inhuman light shines brighter in Dean’s eyes, now. Silver swirls around his face, his hands, washes all the color out of his skin. He sinks into the uncanny valley, right there before Sam’s eyes.
Efnisien tips the contents of the bag onto the floor. Sam squints at them in the growing light. A hunk of bone. Dried-out plant matter. A feather.
It’s a summoning spell, just like the one they used to summon Nisien.
“He wouldn’t come when I called,” Efnisien shouts. “Brân. He always thought he was better than the rest of us, just because he was the eldest. Well, he knew nothing! He took her from me!” There’s a note of hysteria in his voice. It’s turning hoarse, ragged. It isn’t Dean, Sam knows it isn’t Dean, but it still makes something clench up painfully beneath his ribcage. “And the rest of you went along with it! You always hated me. Now you’ll all have to stand up and fight me.”
“Brother.” Nisien’s voice is soft, resonant with sorrow. It rings through the clearing and makes it feel like it’s full of quiet, cut off from the rest of the world. Efnisien abandons his tirade and goes quiet. “I never hated you. None of us did.” Nisien steps forward, offering a hand. “I don’t think we ever understood you—but if you came with us, stopped all this? We could try. We could all try. Why not give us a chance? Let us give you a chance?”
Efnisien hesitates. Looks at his brother, wild-eyed. Sam sees that expression on Dean’s face, and it’s like having all the breath punched out of him. He can’t help but remember the last time he saw it for real.
In that barn, after the fight with Cain. Sam had been so afraid that Dean was lost the second he stepped inside those doors. That he wouldn’t be himself when he emerged. And he wasn’t. It was just that Sam took too long to see it.
Efnisien hesitates for a second. Then he shakes his—Dean’s—head, and shouts, “No! No, you’ll only leave me again. You all will.”
He pulls something else out of a pocket, and Sam recognizes the gleam of Dean’s lighter in the silvery light. Efnisien flicks it once, twice. The spark catches, and he tosses it onto the pile of spell ingredients.
He begins to recite something. Measured and hypnotic, the words half-familiar even though they’re in a language Sam doesn’t know, one that sounds heavy and alien coming out of Dean’s mouth.
Sam recognizes enough to know that it’s a summoning incantation. Almost the same as the one he used earlier, to summon Nisien.
Who, right now, still stands in front of his brother, one hand held out in that beseeching gesture. He doesn’t move when Efnisien starts to chant. The resignation settles back into the lines of his face, aging him a dozen years in the space of a few words.
Sam turns to Cas. “I think we’re done waiting,” he says.
“Agreed.” A blink of an eye, a disturbance in the air, and then Cas is standing behind Efnisien—behind Dean, with the creepy silver light still glowing in his eyes. Sam darts forward, levelling the shotgun at the space above the fire, where whatever Efnisien just summoned is presumably going to appear.
That’s when he feels it. The same thing they felt last night, when they tracked Spalls here. That sensation in the air. A rushing, a pressure, like something vast bearing down on them…
Nisien cranes his neck to peer through the trees. Efnisien looks up, his rapturous expression even more unsettling on Dean’s face than wild-eyed desperation. Sam knows he should look up, find out what they’re dealing with here, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Dean’s face.
Then there’s somebody standing in front of him.
Sam takes a step back and blinks.
It isn’t one of the translucent ghostly figures from last night. It’s Mrs. Sefton from the farm. She’s dressed in a bathrobe and pajama pants, fluffy white slippers on her feet, and her eyes glow with ghostly silver.
As Sam stares, the translucent shape of a white bird circles toward her and comes to rest on her shoulder.
Crap.
He turns on the spot. Sure enough, it isn’t just Branwen who’s shown up with a brand new borrowed body. There’s a guy who Sam vaguely recognizes from the sheriff’s office—their first port of call before the Sefton ranch—with his own set of glowing eyes. Must be the other brother, Manawydan.
And there’s someone else. Something else, Sam thinks at first, because the shadowy presence that looms over them is more mountain than man. The boughs of the trees move as he passes. There’s no way this guy is possessing a living person. He’s translucent, like all the others were first time around, but Sam gets a sense of mass, of solidity, just looking at him.
Brân. The eldest brother; the King.
These aren’t just any spirits. They’re the heroes, the mythological figures—hell, the demi-gods—of their mythology. Maybe literally. Sam’s read theories about how gods diminish with age, as people stop believing in them and eventually even reading their stories. Even the little asswipe fairies that abducted Dean were gods, once.
Sam pushes the rest of that memory away. Even if he had time for it now, there are parts of it—parts of him in it—that he doesn’t like to think about.
So maybe Brân is nobody’s god anymore, but he’s still a colossus to his brothers and sisters. It’s like their ghostly memories are enough to make him more than a man. No wonder he’s the one Efnisien wants to pick a fight with.
If Efnisien were less of a psycho, Sam might even admire his balls. There’s something about the way his eyes light up when they land on Brân that’s painfully Dean-like. Dean years ago, before the grinding relentlessness of the struggle crushed all the joy out of him. The way he used to grin and crack jokes before a fight. The give-‘em-hell attitude before it got turned into a life-is-hell attitude.
The expression on his face is both familiar and so unexpected it’s like something from another life, and it aches.
“Brân.” It doesn’t even sound like Dean anymore. There’s something else that resonates in it, a frequency that Cas cocks his head at but Sam can’t hear.
Cas stands poised just behind Dean, ready to grab him by the shoulders, but he catches Sam’s eye and Sam shakes his head. They’re outnumbered now, and they don’t know what these guys are capable of. For all they know, the others might just decide to take Efnisien down if things go south, and Dean’s still standing in the crossfire with a target on his forehead. They can’t risk it.
Brother.
Brân’s voice isn’t even a voice at all, really. It’s something Sam feels in his bones, rumbling up from the earth. The kind of voice rocks or trees might speak with.
What do you want with me?
“You know what I want!”
We haven’t known you for a long time, brother.
“You know. You still know.” Efnisien spins around and Dean’s eyes light on Branwen, alight with desperation. “She knows.”
‘She’ stays silent, looking back at him with accusing eyes.
You want us to fight you? Brân asks. Why?
“You hate me so much?” Efnisien spits back, Dean’s face twisting in fury. “Then destroy me!”
Sam takes an involuntary step forward, and he sees Cas do the same. The ghostly siblings don’t even react, apparently too caught up in their own drama to pay attention to what’s going on around them.
We never hated you, brother. There’s sorrow in it. Old, slow sorrow, seeping into Brân’s voice like water filtering through rock. I forgive you. Come with us.
Brân gestures with one shadowy hand, and Sam’s breath catches in his throat.
The path into the woods is gone. Where it stood, there’s just blackness—and a bridge, woven out of silvery thread, suspended above the void. It stretches so far into the distance that Sam can’t see the other side. There’s a hum in the air, making the hairs on his arms rise.
Let the human go, says Brân. Come with us.
Nisien chimes in. I forgive you, he says. Come with us.
Manawydan. “So do I. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be this. You never did.”
Efnisien turns to look at one, then the other. There’s confusion cutting through his anger, now. He reaches for the gun tucked into the back of Dean’s waistband, then hesitates, fingers fluttering in the air.
That’s when Branwen steps forward.
They just stare at each other for a moment. It’s uncomfortable watching Efnisien’s expressions cross Dean’s face. The fear there. The hope.
A long moment passes before Branwen speaks. “You killed my son, brother,” she says, her voice in a different register from Mrs. Sefton’s. “There is no forgiving that.” She watches his face as it sinks in. Then she holds out a hand. “But I love you still. Continuing to kill innocents—that would be more unforgiveable still. Come with us.”
She inclines her head toward the bridge, and Dean’s eyes follow her. Her words hang in the air like a promise.
Sam swallows. His throat feels dry, but he screws up his courage and gets out, “You know, you should listen to your sister.”
Abruptly, silently, all five of the ghostly siblings turn to look at him. Their glowing-eyed regard is disconcerting—especially the part of it that’s coming from Dean’s eyes. Sam reminds himself (hopes) that Dean is still in there somewhere, and ploughs on.
“I mean, me and my brother? We’ve done some pretty crappy things to each other over the years. We’ve got issues; I’m not saying we don’t. But if I just held onto all of that, forever? I’m pretty sure it would’ve killed me by now.” He takes a deep breath, fixes his eyes on Dean’s face. Tries to will away the ghostly light shining out of them. “It’s never too late to start over. Not if you really want to.”
“He’s right,” Cas chimes in, quietly. “It’s time you rested.”
Sam could swear that he sees Efnisien waver. His eyes dart between their faces—Sam’s and Cas’s, and those of all his siblings. He finds Branwen’s eyes and stares at her for the longest time, his anguish written across Dean’s face.
Then his eyes harden.
Sam feels dread like a stone in his gut. Cas goes tense, ready to grab him, but before he can do so, Efnisien makes a gesture over the fire. The flames flare up, bright, actinic white. Efnisien begins to speak. It’s a new incantation, and the words are unfamiliar, but Sam doesn’t need to understand them to know they don’t mean anything good. There’s a charge in the air, prickling down the back of his neck.
Efnisien makes another gesture. His voice rises in pitch.
And then he falters.
His expression turns bewildered, his mouth moving around words that make no sound. Then his face changes. The silver light in Dean’s eyes dims.
And oh, shit, Sam knows that expression. It’s Dean, and Dean alone. It’s Dean about to do something really stupid.
It happens so fast Sam only has time to make an aborted step forward, his mouth open around Dean’s name. He doesn’t even hear himself say it. There’s something in Dean’s free hand: something bright and metallic.
Dean gives a full-body shudder, like he’s fighting with himself. He goes stiff, and for a moment, Sam’s terrified that Efnisien is back in control.
Then Dean wrenches his arm free and buries the knife in his gut.
There are faces looming over Dean. They’re kinda fuzzy, but he knows who they are. He isn’t that far gone. Yet.
Ghostly voices wash over him. Efnisien, they say—because apparently that’s Glowing Douchebag’s name. Dean still thinks Glowing Douchebag suits him better. Brother.
He reaches up and tries to shove them away, but he’s weak, and he ends up just flapping his hands ineffectually. He doesn’t want them. He wants his family.
The spirits are looking at him, but it isn’t really him they’re looking at. Brother, they say, and Dean tries to tell them to get fucked, he isn’t theirs, but the words won’t come out right and they just ignore him anyway.
Brother, they say again. Come with us. Then a few words spoken in a language Dean doesn’t understand. It’s the big guy’s voice, Brân, and it must be some kind of a spell, because Dean feels something. An uncoupling. That dark web breaks up and drifts away, stops trying to wrap itself around his mind.
When Glowing Douchebag checks out, it’s the opposite of a weight off of his shoulders. Whatever’s been keeping him conscious lifts out of him, and he can’t move his limbs and he’s pierced through with cold. It’s deep in his guts. He looks down and there’s a dark stain on the front of his shirt.
Oh, yeah. He stabbed himself. That’s gonna hurt.
The faces turn away from him. Yes, they say. Their voices fade, echoing like he’s hearing them across a vast distance. Yes, come with us.
And then they’re there. Sammy. Cas. Dean’s own family, kneeling beside him, their faces shadowed with concern.
“Dean!” Sam’s voice is too loud. It hurts his head. “Jesus, Dean, what were you thinking?”
“Hey,” he tries to say, “it worked, didn’t it?” but it doesn’t really come out, the syllables slurring into one another.
“Don’t talk,” Sam says, hand on his shoulder. Solid. Present.
Then Cas touches two fingers to his forehead, and everything goes mercifully black.
He lurches awake once on the drive back to the motel, sliding across the backseat because Sam doesn’t know how to take a corner.
Shadows crawl at the edges of his vision. When he blinks, he sees the negative image of that bridge stretching across the void, hears echoing voices. Come with us. Come with us. Come.
He rubs at his eyes and tries to sit up. Cas’s hand lands on his shoulder, not letting him. “Hold still,” he says. “I’ve healed the stab wound, but you’ll be weak for a little while. Rest.”
“’M not weak,” Dean protests, and shoves ineffectually at Cas’s arm. It doesn’t move, and the darkness crawls back up to meet him.
Come with us. Come with us.
Their faces keep floating over him. Glowing Douchebag’s brothers and sister, their voices joining together like a lullaby. Even Branwen, who flat-out said that the crap he’d pulled was unforgivable. The bird on her shoulder watches with flat, unwavering eyes, but she says, Come with us.
Dean doesn’t get it. Glowing Douchebag didn’t deserve any of that. They should’ve let Dean bleed out and left Glowing Douchebag to die along with him. But they won’t leave him alone. Their concerned faces, their soft, encouraging voices. He tries to cover his eyes with his hands, but he can’t shut them out.
Next time he wakes up, it’s Sam’s face hovering over him.
He squints and sits up on the motel bed. “Dude,” he grumbles. “Get outta my face, that’s creepy.”
Sam grins. “So you’re feeling better.”
“Fuckin’ A.” He takes a look around the room. “Where’s Cas?”
“Back in the woods. He’s gonna hang around there for a while, make sure that bridge closed up after they took Efnisien back to Annwn.”
Dean frowns. “Where?” He pauses. “Wait, never mind, I don’t care. We got any beers?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Sam turns away to root through their stuff, and somehow it’s easier to ask the back of his head, “Why’d you think they did it?”
“Did what?”
“You know.” Dean shifts on the bed, but he can’t get comfy. “Took him back, after all the crap he’d done. I mean, he offed his sister’s kid. You don’t earn forgiveness for things like that.”
For a moment, the line of Sam’s shoulder’s stiffens. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know, man,” he says. “I mean, they weren’t even completely human, I don’t think. Maybe their brains don’t work like ours. But if I had to guess? Maybe he wasn’t always that way. Maybe they knew there was good in him, once, and they chose to believe there could be again.”
“Yeah.” Dean frowns. “Or maybe they just felt guilty.”
“Could be.” There’s a clink of bottles, and Sam turns around, beers in hand. “Or, I dunno, maybe they wanted to prove him wrong. I mean, he screwed up big time. I’m not saying he didn’t.” He twists the cap off one bottle, then the other, and passes one of them to Dean. “But did that mean he was doomed to just go around doing evil for the rest of his life? That he didn’t have a choice? I wouldn’t wanna believe that.”
Sam lapses into silence. Dean turns his head and finds that Sam isn’t looking at him, his eyes fixed on some point on the opposite wall.
“Yeah, well,” Dean says. “Who the fuck knows? Just as long as they don’t take any family holidays back here anytime soon.”
That gets a faint smile from Sam. He turns back, leans over to clink his beer bottle against Dean’s. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll drink to that.”
Dean settles back against the headboard. He’s only halfway down his beer when he finds his eyes closing again.
This time, at least, his dreams are empty.
