SPN Gen Fic: All the Little Children 5/7
Dec. 15th, 2008 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superbadgirlTitle: All the Little Children
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
superbadgirl
Category: Angst,H/C, AU
Season/Spoiler: S3
Rating: R
Word Count: 5,062 this chapter
Summary: Sam's visions didn't die with YED, and they take both him and Dean down paths they'd rather not walk. Now with added Bobby, for flavor.
Dean would try to come after him, car or no car. Sam knew this was an unwavering truth, but at this point his brother’s dedication worried him more than it comforted him. He suffered no illusions that the kids could kill both of them without much effort, and with even less cause. He hadn’t thought much beyond keeping Dean alive when he made his decision to go with them, and now he had to figure out a way to get himself out of the corner he was backed into. It was a tight fit. He could barely turn around without running into one of the kids, who all seemed to want to be close to him. They were like puppies, always underfoot.
Except they were distant and cold and their need for his approval did not warm his heart. Not only had they made themselves look disconcertingly like him, but they had started mimicking his mannerisms before they’d even left Lawrence’s city limits. Some of them were pretty good at it.
Sam had an idea what they expected from him, he just didn’t have much of an idea how to thwart their hopes. They knew his greatest weakness already and had successfully exploited it easily. They could do it again and again as they tried to make him … be who they wanted him to be. Shit, that even sounded like the old US Army slogan. He was in the evil army now.
The kids, even Anthony, hadn’t so much as blinked when he ordered the Impala be moved somewhere safe rather than left on the street, visible to everyone but Dean. They had just done it. The parking garage where Eric Sullivan was killed was their choice, and he didn’t argue on the off chance either of the employees he and Dean had met would be on staff. Sally was, but she hadn’t shown any recognition when she saw Sam and the clones drop off the car and pick up Andy’s van. She hadn’t noticed him when he was there before, too enthralled with Dean’s charm. The point was how quickly the kids had done what he wanted. Eventually they’d look to him to give orders of greater consequence.
“Eventually we will, yes. Soon, I hope,” Anthony said, suddenly standing right next to him.
Sam jumped a little. He thought he covered it well but the kid grinned at him toothily.
“Just wait until you embrace the powers you have inside you, Sam. It’s amazing.”
That was precisely why he needed to avoid doing it.
“Oh, come on.”
Anthony read his mind; he had to have. Sam stiffened, not liking that idea very much. The kid waved another boy over, the same boy who Sam thought had nodded to him back in the warehouse.
“Sam still doesn’t get it. Tell him, Ike.”
“My father used to beat me,” Ike said softly.
Sam instantly pictured Max Miller’s tortured face and knew where the tale was going.
“And my mom and sister, too. I used to always wonder why, and then something cool happened and I realized it didn’t really matter why. I could stop him.”
Sam winced, conflicted again. He couldn’t blame a child for wanting to stop the bad things that were happening to him and his family. His whole life was based on that tenet, after all, except the bad things that happened to him and Dean and Dad were caused by … bad things, things that couldn’t be put in jail or dealt with in any other way but killing. Ike’s father was just a person, a rotten human being that probably, on some level, did deserve to die.
Anthony looked at Sam with appreciation bordering on pride.
“One afternoon we were driving home from one of my soccer matches. My team had lost and my dad was rubbing in my face how his big, fat son was such a bummer for him.” Ike looked genuinely sad, just for an instant, and then his eyes were cold and hard again.
Sam wondered randomly if Ike had had a soft smile, back when he was normal. He thought Ike had probably been a good kid pushed by unhappy circumstances.
“I didn’t even care that I was in the car, too. I couldn’t take it anymore, and it just happened. There was a big truck. I didn’t think too much about it. I don’t think I tried to do it, really, but I made my dad … not see the truck, and then he couldn’t ever hurt anyone again.”
Sam was reminded yet again how damned lucky he was. His childhood had been far from perfect, and he still held major resentment at the way both Dad and Dean had kept the truth hidden from him, but Sam understood now more than ever why they had. They loved him. They wanted to protect him. Dad because he had also probably suspected very early on that Mom’s death was really about Sam, and Dean because Dean was Dean. Dean. He didn’t know how his brother would do it, but he’d figure out where Sam was. God, he missed his brother, yet would force Dean to stay in Lawrence if he could.
“You get it, Sam? That’s the kind of power we all have now. We can do such great things. The world can be ours.”
Evil things did not equal great things. World domination fantasies were something usually reserved for egomaniacal tyrants. One of these kids had to have some connection, a fond memory, anything, of family. Like he did. Anthony narrowed his eyes at him.
“What about your mom and sister?” Sam said to Ike, ignoring Anthony.
“They’re safe now. Anyway, they really don’t matter,” Ike said with a shrug. “Yellow-Eyes said they’d be protected.”
“His name was Azazel, by the way. He’s dead, and every demon out there has been gunning for me every chance they get since then. They’ll come after you. Your families aren’t safe, if they ever really were. And none of you are immortal. You’re not safe either.”
“I don’t think the demons know we exist, Sam,” Anthony said, an unconcerned air in his tone. “Yellow-Eyes … sorry, Azazel had a master plan. He told us everyone knew about your generation and how you’d one day be a great leader, but not many knew about us. We’re your secret weapon, your army. He expected some of the demons to not like a human in charge. That makes sense, right? Twenty people like us would be harder to beat if some of them rebelled. Well, seventeen now, without the three who couldn’t hack it.”
He looked around the large room. All the little children stared back at him, unblinking. The rumpled, unwashed looks they all embodied were disparate and jarring in the homey atmosphere of the house they were squatting in. The building looked rundown and derelict from the outside but was actually furnished well, and comfortably. A projection. It hadn’t been what he thought. He’d expected training grounds, a place far from civilization, blood and death and squalor. Evil always lurked in the shadows, but only an invisible veil hid these kids from normal, mainstream life. He had to admit he found it a little fascinating. And scary.
“I’m surprised they haven’t found you yet. You’re not very subtle,” Sam said.
“Oh, there are no demons in Detroit, Sam,” Anthony said. “No one’s on the lookout for us.”
“No demons,” all the kids echoed eerily.
“There are some places where humans have already started down the right path,” a girl’s voice piped up.
Sam looked toward the sound of her voice. She was taller than most of the boys, caramel skin and eyes like iced honey, cold and hard, glittering with something that made him very uncertain. The name Veda popped into his head, and basement, basement, basement. She raised her eyebrow at him. He blinked a couple of times, resisted the urge to shake his head, like he could somehow get her out of his mind.
“There’s no need for demons to go where people are taking care of everything for them. Better to focus on turning others.”
Sam’s immediate thought was how that wasn’t the best course of action. If he were to attack humanity in an attempt at conquest, he’d start with the cities, regions and countries already on a moral decline. That was pretty much the whole of the United States as far as religious fundamentalists were concerned, but careful consideration of demographics and statistics would point to key cities, or even neighborhoods within those cities. Power could be built up quietly and slowly, without drawing any unwanted attention. No one would understand how the balance had shifted from good to evil, just that it had done so as if overnight. There would be no way to stop it once or if anyone finally caught on. Demons had no time for subtlety. Their methods were gratuitously barbaric. Bloodshed wasn’t necessary for domination, could even hinder it; that was something demonkind could definitely learn.
Anthony chuckled, a low throaty laugh that was out of place in someone so young.
Sam shook his head. He felt like he was coming out of a fog. Thick, malignant ideas swirled at him. He couldn’t think anything else. Straightening his shoulders, he shook his head again, looking over at the kids standing around him. Anthony looked pleased. Shit, where had those thoughts come from? Sam felt nauseous and freezing and hot and wrong. He swallowed a couple of times, cleared his throat.
What Sam did next was second nature - he swept the room looking for Dean, who couldn’t possibly be there. As much as he wanted Dean nowhere near this, he also thought he really needed his big brother at the moment. His cell phone was heavy in his pocket, ready access to hear Dean’s voice. He doubted he’d have the chance to use it anytime soon, not surrounded all the time, but his fingers itched to grab it anyway.
“So you’ve been here this whole time?” he said at last, aware of the intrusive stares aimed at him. “Practicing.”
“Some of us have been here longer than others. I got here first, with Emily and Mason and Olivia.” Anthony pointed out the three kids.
Sam didn’t pay much attention, his mind still on other things. Besides, having names to put to faces was too humanizing for him. He didn’t need additional reminders of how these were just people, just kids. He couldn’t let that stop him from doing what he eventually had to do.
“The rest came in groups of three or four.”
“Sounds familiar,” Sam muttered.
It explained how Anthony had assumed the role of interim leader. The kid had a strong personality. He wondered just what methods had been employed to make all of these kids into killing machines, how far along any of them might have gotten before landing there. Clearly Ike had used his power before, for reasons Sam still couldn’t completely fault. The rest probably had as well, voluntarily or, like him, involuntarily. It didn’t matter that much. There was no telling how many kids had cracked under the pressure long before the rest had been abducted and placed in the middle of a strange city. He didn’t understand how none of them had simply tried to go home the second they were taken. Then again, he thought of Lily and how well a departure from Cold Oak had worked for her. Something about the place or how the kids were transported there could have prohibited them from leaving. A cold hand touched his forearm. He pulled away.
“Familiar except he didn’t bring us here to kill each other off,” Anthony said.
“Unless someone didn’t fit into the hive mentality you’ve got going on here. Then apparently anyone was fair game.” Sam glanced at the faces staring back at him, felt their anger, disappointment and … sadness? He cocked his head, tried to figure out what that meant, and from which of them it came. “What about me, huh? What if I never accept the role as your fearless leader? Gonna kill me, too? Might as well get it over with.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Anthony said. “We have more faith in you than you seem to have in yourself, Sam.”
“Then what? Because I’m sure I’ve already made it clear I’m not going to lead a war against humanity.”
“Maybe it would help if you stopped thinking of it as a war. Demons aren’t fighting anyone, and neither will we. We’re just looking out for our own well-being.”
Sam might have laughed if it wasn’t all so fucked up.
Anthony sighed and beckoned for Sam to follow him, as he left the room.
Sam didn’t want to, but he didn’t think he had much choice. He wanted to understand why this group of adolescents had banded together so strongly it was like they were one entity. The word persuasion popped into his head. He shot Veda a look, but couldn’t see her face. She was already following Anthony. Sam trailed after them, scoping the house in closer detail than he had when they’d first arrived, searching for anything that might be useful to know later. A way out, something. None of the windows were locked, the front door didn’t seem that secure. There was no reason any one of these kids, or he, couldn’t walk right out. Sam thought of the dead woman back in Lawrence, and reconsidered. Whatever compelled them to remain, it wasn’t physical. Sam thought maybe it was as strong as iron bars on windows, though. Four of the other kids trailed behind him, reminding him of a miniature entourage of bodyguards. They were an evil secret service.
“We have something to show you. I’m sure we can convince you to work with us.”
They stood before a door, just off of the kitchen. Sam watched it open as if on its own. If they wanted to surprise or impress him into submission, they’d have to do a lot more than parlor tricks. Anthony pointed into the darkness. Sam stepped toward the doorway, seeing narrow stairs descending into inky blackness. A cool draught of musty air assailed him. Basement, he thought, and again furtively tried to catch Veda’s eye. She looked at him, then looked away quickly. He had a notion that whatever was down there, he wasn’t going to like it.
*
“I don’t know what to do, Bobby,” Dean said. It was like déjà vu all over again, only he knew why Sam was gone. Knowing didn’t help. He looked up. His gaze skittered across the cluttered room, landing on his old friend briefly before settling on his hands clasped before him on the table. “I think I might have lost him for good this time.”
It sucked to admit it out loud. The words were open acknowledgement that he’d given everything, his life, to keep his brother safe, but that wasn’t enough. He’d failed anyway and had run himself out of options to fix it. He’d spent too long searching New Orleans. Sometimes logic simply wasn’t enough. It was true that he’d found crime in the city. New Orleans was full of misery and larceny but it was also filled with hope and good will, and all of it blended together into a powerful mix. What he didn’t find were demons or special children bent on fulfilling a demonic prophecy. The best guess he had under the circumstances had been wrong. He’d known it almost immediately, not for skill but for something he couldn’t explain even to himself. Just intuition. He couldn’t feel his brother in New Orleans, which sounded stupid, but for nearly his whole life he’d had such a tight line on Sam the loss of it was physical.
“I wish you’d have….” Bobby started, then paused and shook his head.
Dean blinked at his old friend, and knew Bobby was about to tell him he should have come to him sooner. He knew it was true and he regretted not doing it more than he could say.
A frown played across Bobby’s grizzled features. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. You’re here. How long ago did all of this happen?”
Dean closed his eyes for a second. He didn’t know how to measure time. From the moment Sam walked out of the warehouse in Lawrence to Dean sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table with greasy hair and stubble on his chin, time had been only one thing to him – the enemy. He hadn’t marked it in minutes, hours or even days, only pushed forward as if he could beat it somehow. How could he answer Bobby with that and not sound like a moron? He sighed and cracked open his eyes again, catching the worry on Bobby’s face before it became muted by his need to know.
“What day is it now?”
Bobby looked at him funny, like Dean would actually make a joke when Sam’s life was on the line. Screw the war and screw the yellow-eyed demon’s scary children (Sam wasn’t one, he wasn’t). This was about Sam to Dean, and the rest of the issues were secondary at best. It probably made him a lousy human being to think that way. He didn’t really care.
“It’s Wednesday,” said Bobby.
“Then it’s been….” Dean counted backwards. “Well, Sam’s first vision came on Saturday. That means Sam left with them on Monday night.”
“Boy, how in the hell did you get from Lawrence to New Orleans to here in under forty-eight hours?”
“I honestly have no clue,” Dean said, somewhat hysterically. He ran a hand through his hair. “I drank coffee. I went nuts. I drove, and then I drove and drove some more. The point is I’m here. Please tell me you found something, Bobby.”
All Dean wanted at that very moment was for someone to tell him everything would be okay, even if it was a bald-faced lie. He could count on Bobby; Bobby never let him down. He saw it in his friend’s eyes, nearly the same thing he felt – concern burgeoning on dread, because Bobby knew the same thing he knew about Sam. His friend had lied once, when Dean had outright asked Bobby if he thought something was wrong with Sam. He’d known it was a lie then, just like he’d know now if Bobby lied to him. For a con man, Bobby was terrible at lying to people he cared about.
“Not any more than you came up with. Wherever these kids are, they’re good at flying under the radar. They have an advantage. Azazel was a cunning sonuvabitch, but he couldn’t stop the telltale signs. These kids are humans. They’re leaving no traces I can track through usual methods,” Bobby said unhappily. He got up and grabbed the coffee pot, offering Dean some.
Dean nodded briefly, though he’d been well beyond caffeine as an aid for alertness for a long time. He watched the steam rise from his freshly poured cup.
“What’s the plan with the kids?” Bobby sat down again. “I still don’t know if I understand the full story.”
That was probably because Dean didn’t understand the full story himself. He’d told what he knew, which he’d discovered in retelling to be sketchy and incomplete. The main points could be boiled down to psycho kids wanting to turn Sam into their leader in some crusade of Azazel’s. Details had to come from Sam. Dean swallowed once, throat dry. They might never understand the full range of the plan.
“I don’t really know either,” he admitted. “They had me held to a chair and were playing pincushion with me the whole time. Even without those distractions, they weren’t exactly specific. You know, the same kind of bullshit any demon will spout, vague threats and hints, only they were doing it like annoying teens. All I really know is they expect Sam to lead them.”
“In what? The war? It’s not really a coordinated effort at this point, just individual skirmishes between hunter and demon.”
Dean shrugged. He didn’t know what else to do. He certainly didn’t want to think Sam might be powerful or evil enough to whip a bunch of chaotic supernatural miscreants into some sort of working order, no matter what the master plan turned out to be. If he couldn’t let himself think it, he sure wasn’t going to say it. He read bleak uncertainty in Bobby’s eyes, could see his friend had similar thoughts.
He considered what would happen if Sam’s overwhelming tendency for good somehow flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum, and his focus became bad with a capital B. He’d witnessed Sam at his finest, barely making an effort to get into people’s good graces. A soft voice and earnest eyes and people were like butter. The idea of Sam mutating that ability into something twisted and wrong was so damned terrifying because, lately, Dean had thought it was so damned possible.
“I don’t know, Bobby.” Dean wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find this all a bad dream. He slumped his shoulders. “That’s why I don’t know what to do next. They could be anywhere, doing anything.”
“Okay, I’ll go over this stuff again while you get some rest,” Bobby said.
Dean sat up straighter, ready to object.
“Dean, you look like hell. I haven’t seen you look this bad since Sa … well, for a while. I have a feeling we’re both going to have to be sharp for what’s coming.”
Dean nodded, but didn’t move. As much as he wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find this was a dream, he was more afraid to go to sleep and wake up to find it wasn’t. He was stuck.
“I’ll put out feelers to hunters I trust. Maybe some of them have noticed something that I can use.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dean said.
He thought about Gordon Walker, and any hunters that might have been influenced by him. Some of them surely burned with the roadhouse, but not all. Dean wasn’t quick to give trust to anyone, but he didn’t like the risk of the information that Sam was out there, in the company of the wrong side if not on the wrong side, leaked to someone who’d use it to hunt his brother down like he was a monster.
“The more eyes we have on this thing, the more likely we’ll spot something.” To Bobby’s credit, he didn’t look comfortable with the idea himself. “I’ve already looked over my information five times. I don’t think I’d find anything if I looked for a sixth. No one else has to know why we’re looking for what we’re looking for, or even that we’re dealing with more special kids. They won’t until after we find Sam and get him out of there, if at all. I don’t like the idea of turning people on other people, least of all that brother of yours. Sam’ll be fine. We’ll have him out of there before there’s any real danger, Dean.”
Bobby gave him a half smile, but his eyes shifted down and to the left, back to him and then down and left again.
There it was, the lie Dean had been looking for. Damn if Bobby’s assurances didn’t make him feel just a tiny bit better anyway. Dean stood and stretched, his spine popping several times. Bobby was right about needing to be sharp, he’d told himself that many times already. He just couldn’t. He leaned over the table and pulled the various maps and books toward him. He’d only looked at them once. His eyes weren’t exactly fresh, but it couldn’t hurt. Bobby grumbled something at him. He didn’t pay any attention, absorbed in the information lying on the flat surface.
The map was littered with flags highlighting demonic activity, which was to be expected. Virtually every major population was a mess of supernatural motion. There didn’t seem to be a pattern. Some cities had a higher grade of incidents, while others had a spattering of low-level demons. Subtlety was not a word demons understood, even after all these months of being tracked and hunted. None of the demon trails could be mistaken for anything but what they were, too obvious and reckless to be from these kids who managed to go undetected not only by hunters, but by Azazel’s own minions for months.
“I see what you’re saying,” Dean said. He blinked slowly, trying to give his eyes time to regain some moisture. When he opened them again, he caught Bobby staring at him with concerned pity. He stood up and walked around to the other side of the table. He thought maybe a different angle would help. “Your tracking system is as good as ever, but there’s so much out there right now. How are we supposed to see the forest for the….”
Dean stopped and stared at the maps again. He blinked, and saw something in a different way than he had moments ago. They were looking for dark spots when maybe what they should be looking for was the absence of them. New Orleans hadn’t been touched by demons and if his faith in Bobby was warranted, which it was, then he could clearly see pockets of empty spaces on a map covered with markers. It wasn’t much, maybe nothing at all, but for the first time since setting foot in Bobby’s house he felt something other than sick failure.
“Bobby, look at this.”
“What?”
“Here,” Dean said and pointed, at first to one clean spot, then another, and another. “And here, and here, and here.”
“Those spots are clean.”
“Yeah, but why? Demons should flock to Vegas. It’s Sin City after all. Washington D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans … they’re all places that have a rep for being bad, founded or unfounded.”
“Fargo’s on there.”
“Maybe it’s just too damned cold up there. I don’t know. Most of these should be havens for demons but there’s shit-all evidence there are any.”
“So,” Bobby said, “Why are these places being ignored?”
“I don’t think it matters. There’s probably logic there somewhere. But think about it – demons we’ve run into have enjoyed telling Sam he’s fair game now. Wouldn’t they feel the same about sixteen mini-Sams?”
“Making any one of these cities a perfect place for someone on a demonic hit list to hide out.”
“Exactly,” Dean said. Adrenaline made his skin prickle slightly. “For all we know, Azazel told the demons not to bother with certain places because he put the kids there. No one expected me to waste his ass so it’s mostly chaos out there, but even though he’s not around they could still have that message in the back of their minds.”
“It’s worth considering. We’re going to need help checking all of these places.”
Dean pursed his lips. He paced in front of the table a few times. He was still reluctant to let Bobby make those phone calls. If he was right, the last thing he wanted was to be double-crossed and have Sam snatched away from him by some lunatic hunter. No, actually, the last thing he wanted was to find those lunatic hunters were right about Sam. They couldn’t be. His uneasy feeling had to be baseless.
“You’re sure these guys are okay?”
“I wouldn’t mess with…” Bobby said, rubbed at his temples a little. “Ah. I wouldn’t mess with Sam’s … ah, shit, what the hell?”
“Bobby, what’s wrong?”
“Headache. Bad headache.” Bobby collapsed onto a chair, elbows slammed down against the table with dual cracks, hands still at his temples.
Dean stepped close and put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder, feeling faint tremors running through the older man. Bobby groaned a little and squeezed his eyes shut. He nodded once, as if answering a question only he could hear. The attack didn’t last long, but it left Bobby shaky and pale. Dean had some idea of what had just happened. He had to be sure.
“Bobby, what was that?” Dean said after a second.
“Whoa, what that was, was intense.” Bobby dropped his hands and looked up at Dean. “I think someone just force fed me a vision or something.”
“Of what?” The sharp adrenaline feeling on Dean’s skin was now almost painful. He hadn’t expected anyone to reach out and touch someone, but if he had he never would have guessed Bobby would be the one touched. “What did you see?”
“Lions. Tigers.”
Dean went to the cupboard, got a glass and filled it with water. He slid it to Bobby, who was looking peaked. He commiserated, but he really needed Bobby to explain in greater detail. Lions and tigers weren’t exactly helpful.
“Is that all?”
“No, I heard a voice.”
That was new. Sam? Dean hoped so and hoped not.
Bobby shook his head, as if somehow answering Dean’s unasked question. “It was a girl. She said to send demons.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. He lifted the glass of water and drank the whole thing in a few gulps. He cleared his throat once. “She, ah, also said not to tell you, that you shouldn’t go.”
That was Sam talking, even if it wasn’t Sam actually talking. Dean pursed his lips. If he could figure out where to go, he wasn’t about to stay at Bobby’s and just send demons right to his brother.
“Right, and yet you are,” Dean said.
“Oops.” Bobby shrugged.
“Lions and tigers and demons. That’s not much to go on.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Detroit just happens to be a city not overrun with demon activity. Detroit’s football team is the…?”
“Lions,” Dean said. “And their baseball team is the Tigers.”
Soon, Dean would have to consider why Sam or any of those psycho kids would call demons upon themselves. Now, though, he allowed relief to wash over him. Not only was Sam out there, but he was also still Sam enough to send out an SOS. Dean could fix everything he’d messed up. He had another chance to keep his brother safe. It was a chance he couldn’t squander.
to chapter six
Author:
superbadgirlCategory: Angst,H/C, AU
Season/Spoiler: S3
Rating: R
Word Count: 5,062 this chapter
Summary: Sam's visions didn't die with YED, and they take both him and Dean down paths they'd rather not walk. Now with added Bobby, for flavor.
Dean would try to come after him, car or no car. Sam knew this was an unwavering truth, but at this point his brother’s dedication worried him more than it comforted him. He suffered no illusions that the kids could kill both of them without much effort, and with even less cause. He hadn’t thought much beyond keeping Dean alive when he made his decision to go with them, and now he had to figure out a way to get himself out of the corner he was backed into. It was a tight fit. He could barely turn around without running into one of the kids, who all seemed to want to be close to him. They were like puppies, always underfoot.
Except they were distant and cold and their need for his approval did not warm his heart. Not only had they made themselves look disconcertingly like him, but they had started mimicking his mannerisms before they’d even left Lawrence’s city limits. Some of them were pretty good at it.
Sam had an idea what they expected from him, he just didn’t have much of an idea how to thwart their hopes. They knew his greatest weakness already and had successfully exploited it easily. They could do it again and again as they tried to make him … be who they wanted him to be. Shit, that even sounded like the old US Army slogan. He was in the evil army now.
The kids, even Anthony, hadn’t so much as blinked when he ordered the Impala be moved somewhere safe rather than left on the street, visible to everyone but Dean. They had just done it. The parking garage where Eric Sullivan was killed was their choice, and he didn’t argue on the off chance either of the employees he and Dean had met would be on staff. Sally was, but she hadn’t shown any recognition when she saw Sam and the clones drop off the car and pick up Andy’s van. She hadn’t noticed him when he was there before, too enthralled with Dean’s charm. The point was how quickly the kids had done what he wanted. Eventually they’d look to him to give orders of greater consequence.
“Eventually we will, yes. Soon, I hope,” Anthony said, suddenly standing right next to him.
Sam jumped a little. He thought he covered it well but the kid grinned at him toothily.
“Just wait until you embrace the powers you have inside you, Sam. It’s amazing.”
That was precisely why he needed to avoid doing it.
“Oh, come on.”
Anthony read his mind; he had to have. Sam stiffened, not liking that idea very much. The kid waved another boy over, the same boy who Sam thought had nodded to him back in the warehouse.
“Sam still doesn’t get it. Tell him, Ike.”
“My father used to beat me,” Ike said softly.
Sam instantly pictured Max Miller’s tortured face and knew where the tale was going.
“And my mom and sister, too. I used to always wonder why, and then something cool happened and I realized it didn’t really matter why. I could stop him.”
Sam winced, conflicted again. He couldn’t blame a child for wanting to stop the bad things that were happening to him and his family. His whole life was based on that tenet, after all, except the bad things that happened to him and Dean and Dad were caused by … bad things, things that couldn’t be put in jail or dealt with in any other way but killing. Ike’s father was just a person, a rotten human being that probably, on some level, did deserve to die.
Anthony looked at Sam with appreciation bordering on pride.
“One afternoon we were driving home from one of my soccer matches. My team had lost and my dad was rubbing in my face how his big, fat son was such a bummer for him.” Ike looked genuinely sad, just for an instant, and then his eyes were cold and hard again.
Sam wondered randomly if Ike had had a soft smile, back when he was normal. He thought Ike had probably been a good kid pushed by unhappy circumstances.
“I didn’t even care that I was in the car, too. I couldn’t take it anymore, and it just happened. There was a big truck. I didn’t think too much about it. I don’t think I tried to do it, really, but I made my dad … not see the truck, and then he couldn’t ever hurt anyone again.”
Sam was reminded yet again how damned lucky he was. His childhood had been far from perfect, and he still held major resentment at the way both Dad and Dean had kept the truth hidden from him, but Sam understood now more than ever why they had. They loved him. They wanted to protect him. Dad because he had also probably suspected very early on that Mom’s death was really about Sam, and Dean because Dean was Dean. Dean. He didn’t know how his brother would do it, but he’d figure out where Sam was. God, he missed his brother, yet would force Dean to stay in Lawrence if he could.
“You get it, Sam? That’s the kind of power we all have now. We can do such great things. The world can be ours.”
Evil things did not equal great things. World domination fantasies were something usually reserved for egomaniacal tyrants. One of these kids had to have some connection, a fond memory, anything, of family. Like he did. Anthony narrowed his eyes at him.
“What about your mom and sister?” Sam said to Ike, ignoring Anthony.
“They’re safe now. Anyway, they really don’t matter,” Ike said with a shrug. “Yellow-Eyes said they’d be protected.”
“His name was Azazel, by the way. He’s dead, and every demon out there has been gunning for me every chance they get since then. They’ll come after you. Your families aren’t safe, if they ever really were. And none of you are immortal. You’re not safe either.”
“I don’t think the demons know we exist, Sam,” Anthony said, an unconcerned air in his tone. “Yellow-Eyes … sorry, Azazel had a master plan. He told us everyone knew about your generation and how you’d one day be a great leader, but not many knew about us. We’re your secret weapon, your army. He expected some of the demons to not like a human in charge. That makes sense, right? Twenty people like us would be harder to beat if some of them rebelled. Well, seventeen now, without the three who couldn’t hack it.”
He looked around the large room. All the little children stared back at him, unblinking. The rumpled, unwashed looks they all embodied were disparate and jarring in the homey atmosphere of the house they were squatting in. The building looked rundown and derelict from the outside but was actually furnished well, and comfortably. A projection. It hadn’t been what he thought. He’d expected training grounds, a place far from civilization, blood and death and squalor. Evil always lurked in the shadows, but only an invisible veil hid these kids from normal, mainstream life. He had to admit he found it a little fascinating. And scary.
“I’m surprised they haven’t found you yet. You’re not very subtle,” Sam said.
“Oh, there are no demons in Detroit, Sam,” Anthony said. “No one’s on the lookout for us.”
“No demons,” all the kids echoed eerily.
“There are some places where humans have already started down the right path,” a girl’s voice piped up.
Sam looked toward the sound of her voice. She was taller than most of the boys, caramel skin and eyes like iced honey, cold and hard, glittering with something that made him very uncertain. The name Veda popped into his head, and basement, basement, basement. She raised her eyebrow at him. He blinked a couple of times, resisted the urge to shake his head, like he could somehow get her out of his mind.
“There’s no need for demons to go where people are taking care of everything for them. Better to focus on turning others.”
Sam’s immediate thought was how that wasn’t the best course of action. If he were to attack humanity in an attempt at conquest, he’d start with the cities, regions and countries already on a moral decline. That was pretty much the whole of the United States as far as religious fundamentalists were concerned, but careful consideration of demographics and statistics would point to key cities, or even neighborhoods within those cities. Power could be built up quietly and slowly, without drawing any unwanted attention. No one would understand how the balance had shifted from good to evil, just that it had done so as if overnight. There would be no way to stop it once or if anyone finally caught on. Demons had no time for subtlety. Their methods were gratuitously barbaric. Bloodshed wasn’t necessary for domination, could even hinder it; that was something demonkind could definitely learn.
Anthony chuckled, a low throaty laugh that was out of place in someone so young.
Sam shook his head. He felt like he was coming out of a fog. Thick, malignant ideas swirled at him. He couldn’t think anything else. Straightening his shoulders, he shook his head again, looking over at the kids standing around him. Anthony looked pleased. Shit, where had those thoughts come from? Sam felt nauseous and freezing and hot and wrong. He swallowed a couple of times, cleared his throat.
What Sam did next was second nature - he swept the room looking for Dean, who couldn’t possibly be there. As much as he wanted Dean nowhere near this, he also thought he really needed his big brother at the moment. His cell phone was heavy in his pocket, ready access to hear Dean’s voice. He doubted he’d have the chance to use it anytime soon, not surrounded all the time, but his fingers itched to grab it anyway.
“So you’ve been here this whole time?” he said at last, aware of the intrusive stares aimed at him. “Practicing.”
“Some of us have been here longer than others. I got here first, with Emily and Mason and Olivia.” Anthony pointed out the three kids.
Sam didn’t pay much attention, his mind still on other things. Besides, having names to put to faces was too humanizing for him. He didn’t need additional reminders of how these were just people, just kids. He couldn’t let that stop him from doing what he eventually had to do.
“The rest came in groups of three or four.”
“Sounds familiar,” Sam muttered.
It explained how Anthony had assumed the role of interim leader. The kid had a strong personality. He wondered just what methods had been employed to make all of these kids into killing machines, how far along any of them might have gotten before landing there. Clearly Ike had used his power before, for reasons Sam still couldn’t completely fault. The rest probably had as well, voluntarily or, like him, involuntarily. It didn’t matter that much. There was no telling how many kids had cracked under the pressure long before the rest had been abducted and placed in the middle of a strange city. He didn’t understand how none of them had simply tried to go home the second they were taken. Then again, he thought of Lily and how well a departure from Cold Oak had worked for her. Something about the place or how the kids were transported there could have prohibited them from leaving. A cold hand touched his forearm. He pulled away.
“Familiar except he didn’t bring us here to kill each other off,” Anthony said.
“Unless someone didn’t fit into the hive mentality you’ve got going on here. Then apparently anyone was fair game.” Sam glanced at the faces staring back at him, felt their anger, disappointment and … sadness? He cocked his head, tried to figure out what that meant, and from which of them it came. “What about me, huh? What if I never accept the role as your fearless leader? Gonna kill me, too? Might as well get it over with.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Anthony said. “We have more faith in you than you seem to have in yourself, Sam.”
“Then what? Because I’m sure I’ve already made it clear I’m not going to lead a war against humanity.”
“Maybe it would help if you stopped thinking of it as a war. Demons aren’t fighting anyone, and neither will we. We’re just looking out for our own well-being.”
Sam might have laughed if it wasn’t all so fucked up.
Anthony sighed and beckoned for Sam to follow him, as he left the room.
Sam didn’t want to, but he didn’t think he had much choice. He wanted to understand why this group of adolescents had banded together so strongly it was like they were one entity. The word persuasion popped into his head. He shot Veda a look, but couldn’t see her face. She was already following Anthony. Sam trailed after them, scoping the house in closer detail than he had when they’d first arrived, searching for anything that might be useful to know later. A way out, something. None of the windows were locked, the front door didn’t seem that secure. There was no reason any one of these kids, or he, couldn’t walk right out. Sam thought of the dead woman back in Lawrence, and reconsidered. Whatever compelled them to remain, it wasn’t physical. Sam thought maybe it was as strong as iron bars on windows, though. Four of the other kids trailed behind him, reminding him of a miniature entourage of bodyguards. They were an evil secret service.
“We have something to show you. I’m sure we can convince you to work with us.”
They stood before a door, just off of the kitchen. Sam watched it open as if on its own. If they wanted to surprise or impress him into submission, they’d have to do a lot more than parlor tricks. Anthony pointed into the darkness. Sam stepped toward the doorway, seeing narrow stairs descending into inky blackness. A cool draught of musty air assailed him. Basement, he thought, and again furtively tried to catch Veda’s eye. She looked at him, then looked away quickly. He had a notion that whatever was down there, he wasn’t going to like it.
*
“I don’t know what to do, Bobby,” Dean said. It was like déjà vu all over again, only he knew why Sam was gone. Knowing didn’t help. He looked up. His gaze skittered across the cluttered room, landing on his old friend briefly before settling on his hands clasped before him on the table. “I think I might have lost him for good this time.”
It sucked to admit it out loud. The words were open acknowledgement that he’d given everything, his life, to keep his brother safe, but that wasn’t enough. He’d failed anyway and had run himself out of options to fix it. He’d spent too long searching New Orleans. Sometimes logic simply wasn’t enough. It was true that he’d found crime in the city. New Orleans was full of misery and larceny but it was also filled with hope and good will, and all of it blended together into a powerful mix. What he didn’t find were demons or special children bent on fulfilling a demonic prophecy. The best guess he had under the circumstances had been wrong. He’d known it almost immediately, not for skill but for something he couldn’t explain even to himself. Just intuition. He couldn’t feel his brother in New Orleans, which sounded stupid, but for nearly his whole life he’d had such a tight line on Sam the loss of it was physical.
“I wish you’d have….” Bobby started, then paused and shook his head.
Dean blinked at his old friend, and knew Bobby was about to tell him he should have come to him sooner. He knew it was true and he regretted not doing it more than he could say.
A frown played across Bobby’s grizzled features. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. You’re here. How long ago did all of this happen?”
Dean closed his eyes for a second. He didn’t know how to measure time. From the moment Sam walked out of the warehouse in Lawrence to Dean sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table with greasy hair and stubble on his chin, time had been only one thing to him – the enemy. He hadn’t marked it in minutes, hours or even days, only pushed forward as if he could beat it somehow. How could he answer Bobby with that and not sound like a moron? He sighed and cracked open his eyes again, catching the worry on Bobby’s face before it became muted by his need to know.
“What day is it now?”
Bobby looked at him funny, like Dean would actually make a joke when Sam’s life was on the line. Screw the war and screw the yellow-eyed demon’s scary children (Sam wasn’t one, he wasn’t). This was about Sam to Dean, and the rest of the issues were secondary at best. It probably made him a lousy human being to think that way. He didn’t really care.
“It’s Wednesday,” said Bobby.
“Then it’s been….” Dean counted backwards. “Well, Sam’s first vision came on Saturday. That means Sam left with them on Monday night.”
“Boy, how in the hell did you get from Lawrence to New Orleans to here in under forty-eight hours?”
“I honestly have no clue,” Dean said, somewhat hysterically. He ran a hand through his hair. “I drank coffee. I went nuts. I drove, and then I drove and drove some more. The point is I’m here. Please tell me you found something, Bobby.”
All Dean wanted at that very moment was for someone to tell him everything would be okay, even if it was a bald-faced lie. He could count on Bobby; Bobby never let him down. He saw it in his friend’s eyes, nearly the same thing he felt – concern burgeoning on dread, because Bobby knew the same thing he knew about Sam. His friend had lied once, when Dean had outright asked Bobby if he thought something was wrong with Sam. He’d known it was a lie then, just like he’d know now if Bobby lied to him. For a con man, Bobby was terrible at lying to people he cared about.
“Not any more than you came up with. Wherever these kids are, they’re good at flying under the radar. They have an advantage. Azazel was a cunning sonuvabitch, but he couldn’t stop the telltale signs. These kids are humans. They’re leaving no traces I can track through usual methods,” Bobby said unhappily. He got up and grabbed the coffee pot, offering Dean some.
Dean nodded briefly, though he’d been well beyond caffeine as an aid for alertness for a long time. He watched the steam rise from his freshly poured cup.
“What’s the plan with the kids?” Bobby sat down again. “I still don’t know if I understand the full story.”
That was probably because Dean didn’t understand the full story himself. He’d told what he knew, which he’d discovered in retelling to be sketchy and incomplete. The main points could be boiled down to psycho kids wanting to turn Sam into their leader in some crusade of Azazel’s. Details had to come from Sam. Dean swallowed once, throat dry. They might never understand the full range of the plan.
“I don’t really know either,” he admitted. “They had me held to a chair and were playing pincushion with me the whole time. Even without those distractions, they weren’t exactly specific. You know, the same kind of bullshit any demon will spout, vague threats and hints, only they were doing it like annoying teens. All I really know is they expect Sam to lead them.”
“In what? The war? It’s not really a coordinated effort at this point, just individual skirmishes between hunter and demon.”
Dean shrugged. He didn’t know what else to do. He certainly didn’t want to think Sam might be powerful or evil enough to whip a bunch of chaotic supernatural miscreants into some sort of working order, no matter what the master plan turned out to be. If he couldn’t let himself think it, he sure wasn’t going to say it. He read bleak uncertainty in Bobby’s eyes, could see his friend had similar thoughts.
He considered what would happen if Sam’s overwhelming tendency for good somehow flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum, and his focus became bad with a capital B. He’d witnessed Sam at his finest, barely making an effort to get into people’s good graces. A soft voice and earnest eyes and people were like butter. The idea of Sam mutating that ability into something twisted and wrong was so damned terrifying because, lately, Dean had thought it was so damned possible.
“I don’t know, Bobby.” Dean wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find this all a bad dream. He slumped his shoulders. “That’s why I don’t know what to do next. They could be anywhere, doing anything.”
“Okay, I’ll go over this stuff again while you get some rest,” Bobby said.
Dean sat up straighter, ready to object.
“Dean, you look like hell. I haven’t seen you look this bad since Sa … well, for a while. I have a feeling we’re both going to have to be sharp for what’s coming.”
Dean nodded, but didn’t move. As much as he wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find this was a dream, he was more afraid to go to sleep and wake up to find it wasn’t. He was stuck.
“I’ll put out feelers to hunters I trust. Maybe some of them have noticed something that I can use.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dean said.
He thought about Gordon Walker, and any hunters that might have been influenced by him. Some of them surely burned with the roadhouse, but not all. Dean wasn’t quick to give trust to anyone, but he didn’t like the risk of the information that Sam was out there, in the company of the wrong side if not on the wrong side, leaked to someone who’d use it to hunt his brother down like he was a monster.
“The more eyes we have on this thing, the more likely we’ll spot something.” To Bobby’s credit, he didn’t look comfortable with the idea himself. “I’ve already looked over my information five times. I don’t think I’d find anything if I looked for a sixth. No one else has to know why we’re looking for what we’re looking for, or even that we’re dealing with more special kids. They won’t until after we find Sam and get him out of there, if at all. I don’t like the idea of turning people on other people, least of all that brother of yours. Sam’ll be fine. We’ll have him out of there before there’s any real danger, Dean.”
Bobby gave him a half smile, but his eyes shifted down and to the left, back to him and then down and left again.
There it was, the lie Dean had been looking for. Damn if Bobby’s assurances didn’t make him feel just a tiny bit better anyway. Dean stood and stretched, his spine popping several times. Bobby was right about needing to be sharp, he’d told himself that many times already. He just couldn’t. He leaned over the table and pulled the various maps and books toward him. He’d only looked at them once. His eyes weren’t exactly fresh, but it couldn’t hurt. Bobby grumbled something at him. He didn’t pay any attention, absorbed in the information lying on the flat surface.
The map was littered with flags highlighting demonic activity, which was to be expected. Virtually every major population was a mess of supernatural motion. There didn’t seem to be a pattern. Some cities had a higher grade of incidents, while others had a spattering of low-level demons. Subtlety was not a word demons understood, even after all these months of being tracked and hunted. None of the demon trails could be mistaken for anything but what they were, too obvious and reckless to be from these kids who managed to go undetected not only by hunters, but by Azazel’s own minions for months.
“I see what you’re saying,” Dean said. He blinked slowly, trying to give his eyes time to regain some moisture. When he opened them again, he caught Bobby staring at him with concerned pity. He stood up and walked around to the other side of the table. He thought maybe a different angle would help. “Your tracking system is as good as ever, but there’s so much out there right now. How are we supposed to see the forest for the….”
Dean stopped and stared at the maps again. He blinked, and saw something in a different way than he had moments ago. They were looking for dark spots when maybe what they should be looking for was the absence of them. New Orleans hadn’t been touched by demons and if his faith in Bobby was warranted, which it was, then he could clearly see pockets of empty spaces on a map covered with markers. It wasn’t much, maybe nothing at all, but for the first time since setting foot in Bobby’s house he felt something other than sick failure.
“Bobby, look at this.”
“What?”
“Here,” Dean said and pointed, at first to one clean spot, then another, and another. “And here, and here, and here.”
“Those spots are clean.”
“Yeah, but why? Demons should flock to Vegas. It’s Sin City after all. Washington D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans … they’re all places that have a rep for being bad, founded or unfounded.”
“Fargo’s on there.”
“Maybe it’s just too damned cold up there. I don’t know. Most of these should be havens for demons but there’s shit-all evidence there are any.”
“So,” Bobby said, “Why are these places being ignored?”
“I don’t think it matters. There’s probably logic there somewhere. But think about it – demons we’ve run into have enjoyed telling Sam he’s fair game now. Wouldn’t they feel the same about sixteen mini-Sams?”
“Making any one of these cities a perfect place for someone on a demonic hit list to hide out.”
“Exactly,” Dean said. Adrenaline made his skin prickle slightly. “For all we know, Azazel told the demons not to bother with certain places because he put the kids there. No one expected me to waste his ass so it’s mostly chaos out there, but even though he’s not around they could still have that message in the back of their minds.”
“It’s worth considering. We’re going to need help checking all of these places.”
Dean pursed his lips. He paced in front of the table a few times. He was still reluctant to let Bobby make those phone calls. If he was right, the last thing he wanted was to be double-crossed and have Sam snatched away from him by some lunatic hunter. No, actually, the last thing he wanted was to find those lunatic hunters were right about Sam. They couldn’t be. His uneasy feeling had to be baseless.
“You’re sure these guys are okay?”
“I wouldn’t mess with…” Bobby said, rubbed at his temples a little. “Ah. I wouldn’t mess with Sam’s … ah, shit, what the hell?”
“Bobby, what’s wrong?”
“Headache. Bad headache.” Bobby collapsed onto a chair, elbows slammed down against the table with dual cracks, hands still at his temples.
Dean stepped close and put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder, feeling faint tremors running through the older man. Bobby groaned a little and squeezed his eyes shut. He nodded once, as if answering a question only he could hear. The attack didn’t last long, but it left Bobby shaky and pale. Dean had some idea of what had just happened. He had to be sure.
“Bobby, what was that?” Dean said after a second.
“Whoa, what that was, was intense.” Bobby dropped his hands and looked up at Dean. “I think someone just force fed me a vision or something.”
“Of what?” The sharp adrenaline feeling on Dean’s skin was now almost painful. He hadn’t expected anyone to reach out and touch someone, but if he had he never would have guessed Bobby would be the one touched. “What did you see?”
“Lions. Tigers.”
Dean went to the cupboard, got a glass and filled it with water. He slid it to Bobby, who was looking peaked. He commiserated, but he really needed Bobby to explain in greater detail. Lions and tigers weren’t exactly helpful.
“Is that all?”
“No, I heard a voice.”
That was new. Sam? Dean hoped so and hoped not.
Bobby shook his head, as if somehow answering Dean’s unasked question. “It was a girl. She said to send demons.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. He lifted the glass of water and drank the whole thing in a few gulps. He cleared his throat once. “She, ah, also said not to tell you, that you shouldn’t go.”
That was Sam talking, even if it wasn’t Sam actually talking. Dean pursed his lips. If he could figure out where to go, he wasn’t about to stay at Bobby’s and just send demons right to his brother.
“Right, and yet you are,” Dean said.
“Oops.” Bobby shrugged.
“Lions and tigers and demons. That’s not much to go on.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Detroit just happens to be a city not overrun with demon activity. Detroit’s football team is the…?”
“Lions,” Dean said. “And their baseball team is the Tigers.”
Soon, Dean would have to consider why Sam or any of those psycho kids would call demons upon themselves. Now, though, he allowed relief to wash over him. Not only was Sam out there, but he was also still Sam enough to send out an SOS. Dean could fix everything he’d messed up. He had another chance to keep his brother safe. It was a chance he couldn’t squander.
to chapter six
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 04:46 pm (UTC)I love your user name.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 04:01 am (UTC)Those psy kids are so incredibly creepy, with their sociopathic philosophy and dressing like Sam. I would love to see that in canon! And of course, my favorite part-the brothers looking out for each other. You write such a fabulous smart!Dean...this is how I would imagine him to be (not the dork who doesn't know the origins of fairy tales or Christmas.)
Have I mentioned I'm loving this story?
no subject
Date: 2008-12-16 04:49 pm (UTC)I'm really appreciative to hear your thoughts on the evil kids. I'm not one for kids in fic (even our beloved Sam and Dean: the early years), so I'm glad they're coming off just as I wanted them to. I still think it'd be really freaky to see a bunch of mini-Sams running around. I know the special kid storyline is likely dead in the water, but I SO long for Kripke to remember the generations mentioned...pardon. I'll stop on that tangent.
Thank you for keeping on keeping on. I'm really grateful for every comment! :)
SBG
no subject
Date: 2009-01-24 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-24 05:25 pm (UTC)Thank you for keeping on keeping on with this one! ;)
sbg