Arc 4, Part 1: Aftermath

--

Five days. It had been five fucking days and Dean was running out of things to fix on the Impala. He had already switched the tires out for something more suitable than the ones they stole back in Danville. He had tightened so many things that were supposedly loose it was becoming a compulsion. He had even tended to a barely visible scratch in the paint job. Twice.

Needless to say, Dean was running out of reasons to keep to himself and out of excuses keeping him distracted. He hadn’t even raised the car this time when he laid back on the roller and disappeared under the carriage to check for…something. He just stared at the metalwork, intricacies he knew better than his own anatomy, and tried to forget that what was really broken had nothing to do with his car.

“Dean?”

It was easy to ignore Sam’s voice; Dean had been doing it for almost a week.

“Dean, how long are you going to hide under there? Will you just talk to me?”

No. Dean didn’t want to talk. Talking about this wouldn’t change anything. Dean just wanted to be left alone. Leave me alone.

But apparently five days was Sam’s breaking point, and despite any patience he had had up until now he was done giving Dean space and time to deal with this. Suddenly, there was a strong grip on Dean’s ankles and Sam pulled, rolling Dean back out into the open. It was snowing, soft fluffy flakes falling consistently. Dean hadn’t noticed until now. He wasn’t wearing a god damn jacket and he hadn’t noticed the temperature had dropped low enough to snow.

“It’s been five days, Dean,” Sam said, as if Dean didn’t know, as if Dean hadn’t been counting the minutes, “When are you going to tell me what happened? Even Bobby’s going out of his mind.”

“Not your business,” Dean deadpanned, avoiding eye contact with the figure hovering over him. The younger Winchester had released Dean’s ankles so Dean got to his feet and kicked the roller at Sam—unintentionally of course—so that Sam scrambled backwards, even though it hardly would have hurt had the roller hit him. “I gotta check something,” Dean said lamely, opening up the driver’s side door and climbing inside. He’d start up the engine and pretend he was listening for something, pretend he actually cared about his fucking car right now.

Dean realized he should have locked the door about the time Sam slid in next to him. “Not my business?” Sam repeated coldly, the inside of the car too quiet since Dean hadn’t started up the engine yet, “So it’s not my business you’re a walking zombie lately? Not my business you’ve shut off all week and won’t talk? Not my business that it’s been five days, Dean, and we haven’t seen or heard from Sasha once?”

The following dramatic pause was enough to make Dean choke.

“Dean, what the hell happened between you two?”

I screwed everything up, Dean thought, what more was there to say. But he couldn’t explain the details to Sam. Not yet. Not when he was waiting for Sasha to suddenly just be there again. “I told you,” Dean said, eyes forward and hands gripping the stationary steering wheel.

“Right,” Sam scoffed, “He said he needed some air and never came back. Coz he’d just do that.” Hazel eyes bore into the side of Dean’s face. “Where’s the missing scene, Dean? What aren’t you telling me?”

Why did Sam have to pry? Why couldn’t he just leave things alone? “It doesn’t matter,” Dean breathed, too much like a whisper. Too much like anguish.

“Doesn’t matter?” The world closed in on Dean just a little more every time Sam repeated him, closer than the walls of the Impala so that Dean felt trapped. “Dean, Sasha left. He won’t answer his phone. Not for any of us. The last person who saw him was you. The only person he might have said something to was you.”

Dean tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He could see the white of his knuckles and he wanted to squeeze so hard they’d bleed. Shut up, he wanted to say. Just shut up.

“People don’t just leave, Dean,” Sam pressed on, not listening to Dean’s silent pleas, “Not without a reason. I don’t understand why you can’t just tell me.”

That’s why, Dean thought, because you don’t understand. You can’t.

“It’s not just you, you know? You’re not the only one who cares about him. I want him back too. He’s my friend too.”

God damn it, Sam , shut up!

“I don’t want to have to force you, Dean, but I will,” Sam warned then, a brutal promise, “You know I can. If you don’t tell me what happened that night, I swear to God—”

“We slept together, okay!”

Now Dean really wanted to turn on the engine if only to banish the silence that followed, but he didn’t think he could pry his hands from the steering wheel, even if the key was already in the ignition. He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and tightened his grip a little more.

“That night,” Dean clarified, his voice softer, hollow, “We slept together.”

“You…you mean…” Sure, now Sam had trouble speaking, “You mean…you—”

“Fucked. Had sex. Yes,” Dean growled, turning to face Sam for the first time with a narrowed glare.

At last Sam looked cowed. “Oh,” he said, and now it was his eyes that turned away, unable to look at Dean, “Wow. Okay. And…you think that’s why he—”

“No, I don’t think that’s why he left,” Dean cut in. His right hand finally released the steering wheel, coming up to rub at his eyes as he said bitterly soft, “The part where right after I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going to Hell in a few months,’ might have had something to do with it.”

“Dean!”

See, that was why Dean didn’t want to tell Sam. He knew the lecture he’d get. Knew every word.

“What could possibly have possessed you to think that was the right time to tell him?”

“Well what was I supposed to do?” Dean shot back, rehearsed replies at the ready. It was almost liberating to finally have this fight, as if it was the last step, the last page in the book before Dean tossed it into the fire. “I went in there to tell him,” he said, “Just to tell him, that’s all. Then…things just got carried away and I know I should have stopped it but I didn’t. Afterwards, Sasha started…he started saying stuff like, ‘We have all the time in the world to figure out what this is between us,’ and all I could think was no, I don’t have time. I don’t have any time.” Dean’s voice cracked a little on the last of that and he hated it so much he wanted to scream. Instead he spoke on. “I couldn’t just leave things like that. I had to tell him. I had…I had to tell him.” Dean almost hadn’t noticed that both his hands were on the steering wheel again and although he was staring forward he was seeing nothing but that night.

This was the very chick flick, Lifetime movie moment Dean hated, but he couldn’t avoid it. That’s why he teased Sam instead of coddled him. Why Cassie was the only girlfriend Dean had ever had and he used to have no intention of making that mistake ever again. Dates singular, one night stands, getting and taking what he wanted and then walking away—years of that had saved Dean from having these kinds of moments. But Sasha had ruined Dean’s plan and Dean hated it. He hated that he’d been given another chance just to mess up all over again. And for the same reason too.

Because he waited too long to tell the truth, and Cassie—now Sasha—couldn’t accept it.

“I…I just can’t believe it,” Sam was saying, and Dean only tuned in again because Sam wasn’t yelling at him anymore, “I can’t believe Sasha would leave, even for that. How did it happen?”

Dean let out a great sigh and leaned back, peeling his fingers from the steering wheel painfully. This is the part he had been dreading most because it meant having to relive too much. “Just how you think it happened,” Dean said, wanting to get through this part quickly, “I told him. He freaked. We fought. He left. He never…even yelled at me. Just all these angry statements thrown in my face about how I should have trusted him, should have told him sooner, and I couldn’t…say anything about any of it because he was right. He really did say he just needed air. I could tell he was still pissed but I didn’t think…I mean he wasn’t in his right mind. He put on my jeans and T-shirt, grabbed your jacket you’d left in there. That’s how I knew he had his cell. It was still in your god damn pocket.” Dean scrubbed a hand over his face again. He felt only half awake. He hadn’t been sleeping. He wished he was sleeping now, wished he was dreaming.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sam said, “I can’t believe he’d leave. No matter how angry he was or not thinking clearly, he wouldn’t just leave.”

Dean scoffed. He had been trying to tell himself that for five days. “Yeah? Well apparently he would.”

Ten minutes passed, maybe more, with just them sitting there side by side in the Impala surrounded by quiet. Eventually Sam reached over and tapped the key ring still dormant in the ignition. “Keys to the Impala were in the jeans Sasha took, huh?” Sam said, and not at all as a question, “This is the spare.”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t believe he’d do something like that to you.”

“Bet he couldn’t believe I’d do what I did to him either,” Dean countered.

Sam didn’t have a reply to that.

“I know we can’t keep doing this,” Dean admitted, “Sticking around here, waiting for him to show up. We have a job to do. All those demons. All those hunts. We have to…we have to get back out there. But every time I think about leaving without him…”

“You find something new wrong with the car?” Sam smiled. It was a small pitying smile and Dean was pretty sure it pissed him off but he couldn’t bring himself to get upset.

Things were tough. Things were miserable and unfair. It was Dean’s cue to crack stupid jokes and shrug the whole thing off. He managed to do that over the deal for his own soul, the promise that he was going to Hell for fuck’s sake, but he couldn’t even muster a twin smile to offer Sam knowing Sasha was still gone.

Sasha once told Dean that he hated when people left just as much as Dean did. So how could he do it himself? How could he just walk away? Or fly or whatever Sasha did that made him just suddenly gone that night when Dean finally went outside to see if he was okay.

“It’s like I’m waiting to wake up, ya know?”

“I know,” Sam said, and he said it with such experienced sorrow that Dean could have kicked himself for being so weak. Of course Sam knew. Sam knew better than he did. Sam knew real loss of a love he had had for years, planned to marry, and then watched go up in flames above his bed.

Dean didn’t even know what he felt for Sasha, but he knew that whatever had been there was gone now and he ached to feel it again. “I keep reaching for my cell,” Dean explained with a choked laugh and crooked smile, “Thinking…just maybe—”

The familiar notes of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” rose up from Dean’s pants—his current ring tone. Dean instantly froze. His phone hadn’t gone off in days.

Sam nudged Dean and said his name at least three times before Dean finally dug into his jean pocket and pulled out his phone. ‘Sasha’s cell’ blinked at Dean miraculously. “Holy shit…” Dean breathed. What was he supposed to do?

“Dean,” Sam said, the connotation of ‘pick up the damn phone’ clearly present.

So Dean did, forcing himself to be calm despite the erratic pattern of his heartbeat. “Sasha?”

“Dean?”

Oh fuck it. “Dude, where the hell are you?” Dean practically shrieked into the phone, “Are you trying to kill me sooner? You don’t just fucking leave. I was wrong, I know that, a low as dirt, shit fucking bastard for not telling you about the demon deal sooner, but you don’t…you don’t disappear like…like…” Dean didn’t know how to finish that sentence, but he didn’t get the chance to anyway as Sasha’s voice came small and unsteady again from the other line.

“Leave…? Dean…I wouldn’t leave. I’d never…never just leave.” Sasha sounded so strangely young, like he was crying without tears, like he was trembling, like he was…hurt.

“Sasha? What’s going on?” Dean pressed, his heavy emotions falling prey to sudden urgency. Something was definitely wrong.

“Dean…?” Sasha said again, like it was the first time, like he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Dean at all and he was terrified, “I…I don’t know where I am. I’m so…I’m so tired. Dean…?”

“I’m right here,” Dean affirmed, feeling so scared himself now as he lifted his eyes to Sam for some kind of reassurance. Sam’s eyes were filled with terror too. “Sasha,” Dean said firmly into the phone, “What happened to you? Are you okay?”

There was a long pause, too long for Dean to bear, and then the exhale of breath before someone spoke over the phone was so obviously different and steadier than Sasha that Dean couldn’t help feeling panicked. “I’m afraid your friend is a little…unwell,” said a new voice, and Dean knew he recognized it but he couldn’t place from where.

“Who are you?” Dean growled, so angry now but still scared and everything else besides that he was grinding his teeth hard enough to hurt, “What did you do to Sasha?”

Sam’s eyes were wide with that same panic as he leaned across the seats to bring his ear closer to the earpiece of the phone, listening along with Dean with their heads close together.

Five days, Dean kept thinking. Five fucking days.

“That was quite an impressive show you put on for us that night,” the voice continued, ignoring Dean’s angry questions, “The incubus hasn’t been too forthcoming about your brother’s powers so I’ve had to be a little…unfriendly. I’ve seen enough now from our encounters though to know that Gordon was right.”

“Gordon?” Dean repeated like a curse and Sam looked almost nauseous. Then realization struck Dean like a blow to the chest. “Kubrick,” he all but snarled. The bastard must have followed them from New York. “If you’ve laid a finger on Sasha, you sick son of a bitch…”

“Your compassion for monsters really is remarkable, Dean,” Kubrick said, “Gordon didn’t understand it either. The incubus is alive,” he added like an unimportant afterthought, “But I don’t have to keep him that way. He means nothing to me anymore.”

Dean wanted to strangle Kubrick through the phone for dismissing Sasha like that, like trash to be rid of.

“Sam is what matters now,” Kubrick went on, “There was barely a scratch on Gordon’s body when I found him, but still, no pulse. Do you really believe, Dean, that there can be any underlying goodness in a creature that can stop a person’s heart dead in their chest? Or have you willingly joined ranks with the Devil?”

Wonderful. Dean all but rolled his eyes. The bullshit Kubrick was spewing wasn’t worth his time to respond to, and Dean was too angry anyway. “Sasha trusted you once, damn it,” Dean spat at the phone, “He wanted to trust you. He’s never hurt a human being, not once.”

But Kubrick didn’t honor Dean’s words with a response either. “You’ve lost your way as an instrument of God—a hunter’s true purpose,” he said instead, “Deliver your brother to the warehouse on Cargile Street at the edge of town. He is the Adversary. He must be stopped.”

Dean was so sick of this, of righteous hunters carrying a crusade against his brother that only ever got innocent people hurt. Still, he growled into the phone, “And Sasha?”

“The incubus will live for as long as he’s useful,” Kubrick said. Then the line went silent.

Almost instantly the phone dropped from Dean’s hand to fall uncaringly between the seats and he dived out the door, leaving it ajar behind him. Dean had used his lock picks earlier to pick grit out of the dashboard’s crevices—another mindless distraction—so the tools were still in his pockets.

Dean crouched before the Impala’s trunk and set to work. A separate key opened it—one Sasha had in the pocket of Dean’s borrowed jeans—but the spare had been lost months ago and Dean still hadn’t gotten around to making a new copy. He barely heard Sam’s door slam or noticed his brother come up beside him as the lock clicked and he threw the trunk open.

It was all there. Sasha’s duffle. The guitar. The extra weapons Sasha had added to their arsenal. Dean hadn’t brought any of it inside, a joke since Sasha had teased him about leaving everything in the car. Sasha had used an extra toothbrush, used Bobby’s shower things just as Dean had, and wore those ugly orange and black tiger striped pants. It hadn’t seemed important. Dean had just assumed Sasha took his things when he left since Sasha had the keys to the car. Sasha wouldn’t leave without his things. Sasha wouldn’t leave. Dean had just assumed. He never assumed. He knew better than to fucking assume.

“I didn’t check the trunk. I didn’t check the fucking trunk!” Dean reared back and kicked the rear bumper as hard as he could. Then again. Again. Again.

“Dean.”

Dean stopped but he wasn’t done seething. It was too much too soon. He couldn’t almost lose Sasha twice in one bloody week. “We have to go now,” Dean said, looking over at his brother with acidic determination, “Now.” And Dean was off. He slammed the trunk shut again and turned back towards his driver’s side door.

“Dean, hang on!” Sam called after him, rushing around to the passenger side again but speaking over the top of the hood to keep Dean from getting inside just yet, “We’re playing right into Kubrick’s hands. We should at least wait for Bobby.”

“Wait for Bobby?” Dean repeated incredulously. He slammed a hand down on top of the hood, leaving a slight handprint from the snow that continued to fall around them. Dean barely noticed that his arms were slick with flakes. “Bobby’s two towns away hauling back a wreck for the scrap yard. He’ll be hours and Sasha will be dead by then. Kubrick wants you. Sasha’s just bait. And bait’s expendable,” Dean finished softly.

The brothers climbed into the car at the same time, their doors slamming shut with a unified resonance. That sound used to spurn Dean on, but now there was a hollow ache where a third door slam should be.

Dean had grown too used to having his family back. He would not lose one of its members again.

“We have a plan?”

Dean turned the key in the ignition and his baby started with a glorified purr. “Plan? Yeah, I got a plan. Get Sasha. Get out. Don’t die. With a whole lot of kill Kubrick in between. Sound good to you?” Dean shifted into gear and peeled out. All of their guns were in the trunk. Dean didn’t need a fucking jacket. They were doing this now.

“That’s your plan?”

“Yep.”

“Well, it’s childish, vague, and suicidally stupid.”

A slight difference in Sam’s tone gave him away only too easily, and Dean waited for the punch line.

“Good to know you’re feeling like yourself again,” Sam snarked, smiling sideways at Dean in a valiant attempt to make up for Dean’s lack of wisecracking.

Times were too serious to let the tensions win. Dean forced an answering smirk and said, “What can I say, Sammy? I aim to please.”

--

They pulled up to the warehouse fifteen minutes later. Dean barely had to look up during the drive; he knew this warehouse, having passed it many times. Bobby had even mentioned interest in buying it on occasion to use the space for extra storage. It was empty and had been for years, meaning that unlike a working warehouse or factory, it was filled with large empty rooms and very few hiding places. Either Kubrick was very stupid or he had this planned out so well he didn’t need hiding places.

Dean hated to give the guy any credit but he was pretty sure things had to be the latter. There was no telling what waited for them inside, no guarantee that Sasha was even there, but there was enough incentive that Dean just couldn’t care that this was so obviously a trap.

“No,” Dean said when Sam made to go around to the other side of the building, “We’re not doing that again. Kubrick wants us to split up. He wants you alone. We’re going in together.”

After barely a moment’s pause, Sam nodded. The snow had started coming down harder, still light fluffier flakes with little wind, but it was enough that Dean had to blink several times to see his brother clearly through the curtain of white.

Since there was no chance of taking Kubrick by surprise—the bastard knew they were coming—going through the main doors seemed just as logical as anywhere else. Sam and Dean positioned themselves on either side of those double those, pleased as always that this building was on the edge of town because worrying about people passing and noticing their guns was more than a slight annoyance. Dean had an extra piece tucked in his jeans as well as his ankle blade. He had almost grabbed his shotgun but as satisfying as blowing a whole through Kubrick’s chest would be it just wasn’t practical.

Like practiced professionals, since really that was what the Winchester brothers were, Sam and Dean stormed inside, guns cocked and steady, their eyes darting like soldiers on the front lines to secure all immediately visible areas. Their assumptions about the building had been right—several large empty rooms with only a handful of leftover metal shelving and stray boxes. The main entrance led right into the largest part of the warehouse with the other rooms leading off elsewhere through closed doors. Those doors posed the most threat but what Sam and Dean couldn’t figure out was why the main area, so open and bare, held no sign of Kubrick but did reveal the alarming sight of Sasha in a chair in the middle of the room.

The incubus was slumped forward, tied to the chair, and wonderfully unconscious rather than dead if the heavy breathing was any indication. He looked grimy from five days without a shower, and was still wearing Dean’s T-shirt and jeans that didn’t fit quite right.

Dean wanted to rush forward, make sure Sasha was okay, untie him, something, but it was too easy. “Where’s the trap?” Dean whispered to his brother. They remained nearly shoulder to shoulder or back to back as they moved further into the warehouse. Dean looked up at the ceiling, especially the area above Sasha’s head but he couldn’t see anything suspicious. The walls were just as bare.

“I don’t see anything,” Sam whispered back, “You don’t think he would have…” Sam glanced at Dean warily and Dean saw Sam’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, “You know, attach a bomb to Sasha’s chair or something. Booby trap?”

Great, now Dean was even more anxious. But he didn’t think Kubrick seemed the pyrotechnic type, not like Gordon back in that shack when he had set up a bomb for Sam. Besides, the chair looked clean, a simple wooden thing Kubrick probably pulled out of one of the rooms. They could see almost all of it, even with how Sasha was slouched.

Inching closer, eyes and ears still perked to every possible sign of ambush and guns still more than ready to take a shot at anything that moved other than Sasha, Sam and Dean eventually were close enough to be sure that there was no immediate danger. There was some kind of table just behind Sasha. On top of it rested Sam’s coat that Sasha had taken and three empty vials that looked like they would have held some of Sasha’s normal antidote. That didn’t make any sense to Dean, but then neither did the fact that Sasha was breathing when the incubus’ arms, neck, and face were covered in cuts Dean could only assume were made by iron.

“Jesus…” Sam breathed, risking a moment to stop his watchfulness of their surroundings and reaching for the hem of Sasha’s too short shirt. It rose up a little, Sasha’s torso being longer than Dean’s, and revealed a trail of more cuts that became more and more visible as Sam lifted the shirt up past Sasha’s ribs. “Dean,” Sam said imploringly. The cuts were everywhere.

Dean had already untied Sasha’s hands from the chair when Sasha gave a sudden start and his eyes fluttered open. Sam pulled his hand back and both brothers crouched on either side of the incubus as he came to. Now that he was untied, Sasha started to slouch further and Dean had to steady him with both hands on his shoulders.

Immediately, Sasha tried to pull away, his face contorting with pain.

“No…st-stay away…” he said, his teeth chattering. Sasha’s skin felt ice cold to Dean’s touch even though Dean was the one who had just come inside from the snow.

“Sasha, it’s okay,” Sam said, steadying Sasha on the other side, “It’s us. Sam and Dean.”

“No,” Sasha said again, his eyes barely focusing as they turned to each of the brothers, bloodshot and filled with those awful blue veins. The cuts showed signs of the veins too but only in the immediate areas, not spreading out and joining together the way they should have. “You’re…you’re not…you’re not them. I’m…imagining you again.”

Hearing Sasha say that, his voice near tears and so childlike, crushed something in Dean. He had to reassure Sasha somehow, had to be certain that Sasha saw him, really saw him. “Look at me,” Dean commanded, pulling Sasha’s face towards him and trying to find some recognition in the dim blue eyes, “See, it’s Dean. It’s not your imagination. I’m right here in front of you.”

Blinking wearily at Dean’s face, Sasha just shook his head. “No…” he breathed again, “How can Dean…find me? He doesn’t know where I am.”

“Kubrick told us where to find you,” Dean assured Sasha, hating the way Sasha spoke as if Dean wasn’t crouched right in front of him, “Do you know where he is?”

Again, Sasha blinked slowly at Dean’s face, his expression sagging with fatigue and confusion. “He has a name…?” Sasha said, completely sincere in his delusions.

It was more than clear that Sasha wasn’t entirely in his right mind right now and Dean didn’t know how to respond to that question, so Sam took on the burden, putting a hand on Sasha’s knee to get his attention. “Sasha, you know his name. You know him, remember? He’s an old…friend of your dad’s.” Sam paused understandably on the word ‘friend’.

Now Sasha was blinking at Sam and he seemed to be thinking Sam’s words over as his mind cleared enough to remember. “Gabriel…” he said slowly, his voice dreamy and far away, “Like the angel.”

Dean tried not to choke on the grunt that left him. “Kubrick’s no angel, Sasha. Now come on, focus. Where is he? We need to find him and take care of things before we get you out of here.”

Sasha’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling, a million miles away. “Dean…thinks I left him. But he’s the one…who’s going to leave…”

That stung. It was too much. Dean grabbed Sasha’s face in both hands this time, hating himself for the flinch Sasha gave as Dean touched the cuts there, but unable to stop himself. “Sasha, I’m right here. Dean. Touching you with real hands, my hands. You feel that, don’t you?” Dean was afraid for a moment that maybe all Sasha could feel was the pain of the cuts.

But then those tired, marred blue eyes were blinking again and Dean saw the spark he had been waiting for. “Dean…?”

Sweet affirmation. “Yeah,” Dean grinned, so thankful for that small utterance of Sasha knowing him that he didn’t care about all the details right now that didn’t make sense, “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? Everything’s gonna be okay.” Dean knew he sounded patronizing like he was talking to some injured little kid, but that was kind of how things felt right now. Sasha was damaged in some way that dimmed his senses and his thoughts, just as Dean remembered from back in Minnesota the first time he saw those veins. “Do you know where Kubrick is?” Dean tried again, slow and direct.

Sasha shook his head.

“Okay,” Sam said, squeezing Sasha’s knee that he still had a hold on, “Do you know what he did to you? Are all these cuts from iron?”

Slowly, Sasha started to nod. “Hurts,” he said like a whimper, “Everywhere. He didn’t…want me to…say I’m Deklin’s son. But I am…aren’t I?” Sasha’s eyes turned imploring and desperate as they looked between the brothers again.

“Of course you are,” Sam said, so much better at the comforting tone and assurances than Dean was, “But stay with us, okay? If Kubrick cut you with iron then how are you okay? The poison looks like it’s working through your body differently this time. Is it like before, just an alloy?”

Sasha shook his head again. “Real iron,” he said, “But…but if we drink the antidote…without putting it on the wound…it…slows it down, but still…still hurts. I can…feel it…under my skin. It hurts so much…”

That was it. Killing Kubrick wasn’t good enough anymore. Dean wanted the bastard to suffer. Dean had felt empathy for the vampire woman Gordon tortured with dead man’s blood. This was worse. This was a man who looked at Sasha as something of a protégé, as an old friend’s son and a good kid. Being an incubus shouldn’t have been enough reason for Kubrick to turn against him in such a brutal way.

Dean didn’t care about the psychology behind it, that Kubrick probably saw hurting Sasha as a way to kill the truth he couldn’t accept, that a good friend had been something other than what he thought. Psychology wasn’t an excuse. This was Sasha. And he’d been tortured for five days by someone he should have been able to trust.

“Dean, take Sasha to the car.”

Dean gave a start, pulling out of his thoughts to stare at Sam as he processed what had just been said to him. “Excuse me? Were you not listening before when I talked about the no splitting up part to the plan? It’s exactly what Kubrick wants. Let’s just get out of here.”

“No. Don’t you understand, Dean?” Sam said, keeping his grip on Sasha to help the incubus stay upright but turning to Dean, “Why do you think Kubrick’s playing it this way? He knows it doesn’t matter if he’s here in this room when we find Sasha. Finding Sasha like this, and with the way things have gone before now, he knows we can’t just leave. He knows we’ll have to go looking for him, right into the rooms he probably has traps in. And he’s right. We have to. We can’t just leave again, Dean, and wait for something like this to happen again. It needs to end now.”

“Back up to the part about him having expected us to do this,” Dean countered, “You’re right, he almost for certain has those rooms booby trapped or god knows what, and you’re just going to play right into his game? I don’t want to give him another chance to ambush us later, but damn it, Sam—”

“I’m going, Dean,” Sam said, standing up and passing his hand over Sasha’s hair so that the incubus looked up at him vaguely, “It’s me he wants anyway. He doesn’t know everything that I can do. I can use that to my advantage. No alcohol getting in the way this time.”

“Sam…”

“Dean, I’m going,” Sam said again, turning his head to stare down at Dean with a fierce look that made Dean’s throat close up because there was an apology in those eyes too, “Don’t follow me,” Sam said, and with all Dean’s strength he wouldn’t have been able to even as Sam walked away, gun ready, towards one of the closed doors.

As soon as Sam disappeared into that other room, and thankfully no explosion, sound of gunfire, or other telling horror followed, Dean was able to move and think clearly again. He would have to have a very severe talk with Sam about how he was not allowed to mojo him, god damn it, and really needed to stop doing that.

Determinedly, Dean got to his feet and as carefully as he could he helped Sasha stand up as well. Sasha hissed at the hold Dean had on him, touching cuts that had to sting horribly. Most of the antidote was in the trunk, all of what they knew remained of Sasha’s stash, but there wasn’t time to attend his many wounds. Sam was willingly walking into a trap and Dean was not going to just allow it.

“He said don’t follow,” Dean said, not necessarily to Sasha since there was no way to be sure whether or not Sasha even understood what was going on around him, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try getting to him through one of the other doors. That’s just…exploring. Yeah. I’m not following. Hell, I don’t want to find Sam. I want to get to that asshole Kubrick first and ram my gun up his ass.” And since none of that was a lie, Dean had no trouble overriding the mojo to let him work his way to the door next to the one Sam had gone through and ready himself for the worst.

“Traps…” Sasha said so lightly Dean barely heard him.

“Yeah, I know,” Dean said. He looked down at Sasha, slumped against him but at least taking some of the weight despite how obviously difficult it was for him to move. “Hey,” Dean said as they reached the door, “I shouldn’t have moved you. I should leave you here. You’ll be safer here.”

“No!” Sasha pleaded in a terrified child’s voice, clinging to Dean’s waist with his free arm while the other was hoisted around Dean’s shoulders, “Don’t leave me, Dean…please, don’t leave me…”

Dean knew it would be stupid to take Sasha, too much of a burden and hindrance on his own abilities with a taller, larger incubus attached to him, but he just couldn’t go against those scared eyes and desperate pleas. “Okay, but then you’re gonna have to stay focused for me and help. Can you do that?”

Sasha nodded. Having something to focus on seemed to help his mind stay a little clearer.

“Okay. Okay, then…you keep an eye open in case I miss something, huh? And hey, you know anything about what Kubrick’s got set up in here?”

“Something…I think…” Sasha said, searching his memories with obvious difficulty, “Something about…wires…and…weapons…and traps.”

Well that was a helpful, Dean thought.

“Devil’s traps,” Sasha finished, and Dean was certain then that Sasha was still halfway to lala land. But he couldn’t leave his friend and he couldn’t just let Sam walk willingly to his death either, no matter how strong Sam’s powers had grown. This was Kubrick’s court now.

“Only one way to know for sure,” Dean said, holding Sasha as steady as he could on his left side so that his right hand was free to hold his gun. He opened the door with that hand and then kicked it the rest of the way, peering inside. This place was way too big and way too fucking quiet, but the room looked benign enough. “Come on,” he said.

Dean felt like he was in that awful ‘Cube’ movie, where the people were all trapped in a giant cube with smaller cubes as rooms that had traps you couldn’t see until they had you. He kept waiting for something to lash out at him, for acid to spray from the ceiling, or something. But not all of the rooms had to be trapped, and luckily Dean was fairly certain now that this room was safe.

“I think they all connect back somewhere,” he said, more to himself again. There were two doors to choose from now, the room otherwise empty, and he made the decision to go left since that was closer to the room Sam had gone through.

This room, finally, had some clutter. Not enough that a grown man could hide, but enough to hide traps. Dean entered more carefully, finding Sasha to be heavier and heavier the further they went, which really wasn’t surprising. At least some form of remaining adrenaline was keeping Sasha conscious and able to move his legs.

Dean was staring at the shelving, cluttered with old boxes and random equipment, as he moved forward. He should have been looking at the floor, but thankfully Sasha was because they incubus suddenly called out.

“Stop!”

Dean felt small pressure on the front of his foot and instantly pulled back, just as a gun fired into the wall, barely missing them. “Fuck,” Dean breathed, looking down finally to see the trip wire. Wire, Sasha had said before. Right. “Good eyes, pal. Probably just saved my life,” he smiled at Sasha. But Sasha was sinking down a bit and his eyes were fluttering. “Whoa, you okay? Not hit or something, are you?”

“So…tired,” Sasha said, trying to keep his eyes open.

Dean couldn’t imagine Sasha had gotten any actual sleep in the past five days. “I know. Just a little longer. Then we’ll get back to Bobby’s, patch you all up, and we’ll all take a vacation somewhere, okay? All of us. Vegas or something, huh? Make some easy money. Lots of food. Big hotel room beds.” Dean grinned crookedly at that.

So did Sasha. “Tease,” Sasha said in something of a tired hiss.

“You know it,” Dean grinned wider. He much preferred having a flirty Sasha to a half-dead delusional one. “Sam’s gotta be further through now. We have to catch up. Come on.” And Dean dragged Sasha forward, stepping over the wire in case it was set up to fire again somehow, and working further into the room. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary and there was only one door out.

They reached that door and once again Dean turned the knob carefully, and then kicked it open. This next room was dark and it made Dean nervous. There was no way to know what lay inside. Dean entered slowly, trying to keep Sasha blocked by his body somewhat in case anything unexpected came. Dean drug his feet across the floor, testing it for wires. He found one a foot from the door he had just walked through and carefully stepped over it, helping Sasha do the same.

“See, this isn’t so bad,” Dean said. He could almost make out another door ahead of them already and was more than ready to get out of the dark and find some reassurance that Sam was still okay. “I guess Kubrick’s not as good as I—” Dean cut off, feeling slight pressure on his chest this time where he couldn’t have thought to watch out for a wire in the dark. Something clicked in the distance and the only thing Dean could think to do was push Sasha down to the ground.

The next thing Dean knew he was flying back to land halfway between this new room and the one they had come from, lying in the doorway with a great searing pain throughout his chest. That wasn’t a small firearm he had heard go off. That was a shotgun. The very impractical thing he hadn’t brought along himself.

At first Dean thought he must be in shock. There had to be a hole right through his chest and he was already halfway to being dead. But as Dean took slow, pained breaths, he could still feel his chest stinging in several places and he knew that most of it still had to be there. If the shotgun had been positioned far enough away, he would still be in pretty deep shit, but it wouldn’t be a gaping hole, just a spattering of pellets imbedded in his skin.

Dean risked a look, staring down his body. There was too much blood already and his hands were shaking as he ripped it away using the holes that had been made. They were small holes, Dean noted, trying to take comfort in that, and when he could finally see his chest it was the same, tiny little holes deep enough that Dean couldn’t see the pellets that were stuck there.

He could survive this, that’s all Dean cared about. He had to get up, much as it hurt, much as he was bleeding; Sasha and Sam needed him.

Then suddenly Dean felt hands, soft, trembling hands climbing up his body and pressing finally into the wound. “Dean…?” came Sasha’s scared little voice, the sight of him following soon after out of the darkness as he scooted into the doorway next to Dean and tried to help stop the bleeding. “No, no…” he chanted, “No, no, no…you can’t leave. If you’re real…then you can’t leave me. Please…”

“I’m real,” Dean said, and he wished his voice didn’t sound so choked and broken, “And I’m not…going anywhere. We have to…we have to help Sam. You have to help me get up.”

Sasha shook his head furiously, despite how slumped his body looked and how tired his eyes still were. “Have to…stop the bleeding. You’re hurt.”

“I know I’m hurt,” Dean said as soothingly as possible, “But we don’t have time to…” Dean trailed, staring at Sasha’s dirty, too small shirt, that was really Dean’s shirt, “Hey, you want to help?” Dean said, thinking surprisingly clearly for just getting shot by a fucking shotgun.

Wounded blue eyes looked at Dean with desperate devotion.

“You can use your shirt…to tie around the wound…and stop the bleeding. You’ll have to tear it.”

Sasha didn’t even pause to think. He lifted his hands from Dean’s chest and dug into the cotton of his shirt with sudden claws, tearing it down the middle easily. Dean wondered then why Sasha wasn’t in his incubus form completely, since holding the glamours had to take some kind of effort, but he figured whatever was messing with Sasha’s brain messed that up a little too, and he didn’t question it. Besides, half carrying a full incubus while he was shot would not be any easier than half carrying another guy at full strength.

Dean hissed through his teeth, biting back a cry when Sasha tied the torn T-shirt tight around the wound. It would do well enough until they got the fuck out of here. But they had to move. Too much time had passed already.

Getting to his feet wasn’t easy, not when it was like the blind leading the blind with Sasha trying to help him. But stupid as Dean was, a few shotgun pellets were not going to slow him down, not when his brother was still walking into a trap.

Dean knocked the shotgun away when they reached it, propped up in front of the door that led out of the room. There was light peaking through the crack underneath the door, and it was all the encouragement Dean needed.

This next room was brightly lit and much larger again, almost as large as the main area at the front so that Dean knew they had to be clear on the other side of the building now. All of the doors led here, like some fucked up fun house, and to Dean’s great pleasure Kubrick was at the center of the maze, waiting patiently in the middle of the room with nothing but a handgun.

Dean may have lost his other gun when he was shot, but he still had one tucked into his jeans and he pulled it just as Kubrick aimed his. Dean didn’t care, he would have just fired and been done with it, consequences be damned at this point, if Sam hadn’t just then burst forth from one of the other doors.

Kubrick turned on Sam immediately, but naturally Sam had his gun ready too. Dean breathed relief that Sam didn’t look like he had met the same fate with a shotgun shell, though the younger Winchester’s leg was bleeding a little.

“This couldn’t have turned out better if I’d planned it,” Kubrick said, amazingly lowing his gun then and casting a smug grin at Dean, “Look for yourself now, Dean. See what Gordon wanted to show you. The truth about your brother.” Kubrick turned back to look at Sam, calm as anything.

Hazel eyes met across the room. Dean had no idea what Kubrick was talking about, but then his eyes drifted lower and he saw what was drawn on the floor. In front of every door leading into that final room was a devil’s trap. Dean and Sasha were even standing in one.

As Sam glanced down to discover the same thing, that he was standing in the middle of a devil’s trap too, it was understandable that he rolled his eyes before directing them back onto Kubrick.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sam snarled with an almost laugh attached to it, “When are you people going to get it? I am not a fucking de—” As Sam spoke he walked forward, but his words cut off only too quickly when he met an invisible barrier at the edge of the trap.

Dean felt the air rush out of his lungs.

Kubrick beamed.

“Demon,” Kubrick said, as if he was finishing what Sam didn’t get to say but in affirmation instead, “I understand, Sam, if even you didn’t truly know it until now. Your seeming innocence is what swayed Bobby Singer and so many others, I imagine. But even if you don’t want to believe it yourself, you have to see it now. You’re not human anymore.”

Dean forgot his own wounds, forgot the weight of Sasha at his side, and just walked, kicking the paint of the devil’s trap to break the circle in anger as he went, and making it out of his own devil’s trap easily with Sasha pulled along after him. His eyes didn’t move from Sam’s as his brother tried unsuccessfully again and again to leave the trap, every time coming up against that barrier that held him prisoner.

It didn’t make sense. Sam wasn’t possessed. Dean had seen Sam walk through devil’s traps before. Even in Lincoln when they faced the Seven Deadly Sins, surely Sam had passed through several traps when they made them and afterwards. But then Dean couldn’t remember if Sam had walked through one when they were in Ohio. In fact, he was fairly certain Sam hadn’t gotten close enough to the ones they used. But what had changed? What was different now after all this…

Time. After how much more Sam had used his power everyday.

“You understand now, Dean,” Kubrick said as Dean drew closer, unafraid because Dean had lowered his weapon too, staring so much more at Sam, “He is not your brother anymore. His powers taint him, give his soul over to the Devil himself, manifest as man, the Adversary—”

“Shut up,” came a low growl, like Dean had never heard from his brother before. Sam’s eyes were shimmering, the way Dean remembered from Minneapolis before Sam’s TK bent over all of those signs, and from every other time Sam had used his powers with and without complete control.

“You must be stopped,” Kubrick said, ignoring Sam’s growl and glare as he raised his weapon again to point squarely at Sam’s chest.

Dean couldn’t move, knew he didn’t need to, but still, he did not expect what happened next.

Kubrick cocked the hammer but he didn’t fire. Instead, his hand began a slow curve back towards his own temple while Sam’s eyes seemed on fire as they stared at Kubrick with death in their gaze.

“You’re right,” Sam said, his voice too low, too dark, “But not by you.”

The gunshot startled Dean, the gore on the wall, the sight of Kubrick falling and then just there, dead on the floor. It was so brutal, so sudden and heartless. Dean couldn’t breathe, and he felt Sasha tense and clutch him tighter.

“Dean,” called Sam’s voice, still low, still dark, but with something else, something that sounded like Sammy, dripping with anguish and apology.

Dean looked at his brother, his brother, Sammy, damn it, even if he was caught in a devil’s trap. Those eyes were his brother’s eyes, the same eyes as the ones Dean dried when Sam skinned his knees as a kid, the same eyes that glared at him when the teasing went too far, and laughed with him, and looked at him with understanding no one else could ever grasp. Dean knew the words would come before Sam spoke them and he couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear that Sam wasn’t going to give him a choice.

The words landed like lead on Dean’s ears, unforgiving. “Dean,” Sam said again, “Shoot me.”

tbc...

A/N: Ack! I SWEAR the next chapter is not a cliffhanger. Really! Anyway, deangirl1 has made me really want to write that missing scene now, but I still think i'm going to make a contest official. I implore you, dear readers, to try your hands at writing Dean telling Sasha about the deal. You should have enough information now to do well. Please, I know personally that some of you are very good writers, so don't be shy. I'll give you the weekend. Come Monday NIGHT let's say, I'll judge the entries, and the winner can request any scene they went involving the boys and I will write it for them. If I think it fits into the fic, I'll fit it in, and if not, I'll still post as a random scene for everyone's enjoyment. Sound good? Go nuts! deangirl1 has already handed in her entry but can make amendments if she so chooses and send it again.

On a side note, folks, I'm going to be at Anime Detour in Bloomington, MN this weekend if any of you are going. I know this isn't my usual anime crowd for readers, but I figured I'd try my luck anyway. I'll be dressed way too sexy as Ivy from Soul Caliber. My honey says he'll have to beat off the fanboys with a stick. Should be fun! Love you guys!

Crim