Fake Fan Fiction ❯ Fight or Flight ❯ Answers ( Chapter 10 )

Dean was actually a little surprised that he was able to drive as well as he was right now. He and Sam were running on empty, and the clock was approaching midnight, and yet here they were, back in the car, the time headed for Ryo's apartment. And he didn't even know why, really—once again, Sam had just said they had to go, and given very little explanation.

 

In his brother's defense, though, Dean was pretty sure he wasn't being left in the dark on purpose. Sam was simply too deep in his own thoughts to really think about anything else. He probably didn't even realize he was holding anything back. Like right now, for instance—he was leaning against the window, head all pressed up against the glass, probably to ease the pain in his head, his face inscrutable.

 

“You okay?”

 

Sam started slightly and half-turned. “Oh…yeah, I'm fine, why?”

 

“`Cause you don't look like it.”

 

“…Oh,” was all Sam said, before turning back to the window.

 

Uh…okay…that was weird and…unresponsive…

 

He had never seen Sam like this—so unfocused and off-balance. Well, actually, he was usually that way for a few minutes after a vision, but never this long. And the visions themselves were getting more intense, too—as far as Dean knew, Sam had never actually ended up flat on the floor after one of the episodes.

 

So, the bottom line was, whatever was pulling Sam's puppet strings was stepping things up.

 

God, this sucks.

 

XXX

 

The first thing Ryo did when he opened the door was shush them into silence. With a hissed whisper that indicated that Bikky was probably asleep, he beckoned them to follow him, and led the way to his room.

 

“What happened?” Sam asked as soon as the door was closed behind him.

 

“He was here,” Ryo replied, sitting on the bed and pulling himself up to the headboard, wrapping his arms around his denim-covered knees.

 

“Who?”

 

“He came…when I was about to go to sleep,” Ryo said distantly, staring off into space.

 

“Ryo, who was here?” Sam asked gently.

 

“He…he told me he wasn't who I thought he was…and then he kissed me…”

 

“Dee?” That one was Dean this time.

 

“Ryo, was Dee here?” Sam asked.

 

“No,” Ryo said vehemently, suddenly very much focused.

 

“So it wasn't Dee.”

 

“Yes,” Ryo replied.

 

“Yes, it wasn't, or yes, it was?”

 

“Both.”

“Well, I'm confused,” Dean said off-handedly.

 

“Ryo, please, you have to work with us here if you want us to help,” Sam said, still in that same gentle, coaxing voice.

 

Ryo hesitated for a second, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

 

“Good. Now tell us what happened.”

 

“…I already did.”

 

Sam bit down on his frustration, reminding himself that Ryo was not being intentionally difficult.

 

“All right, let's try it bit-by-bit. Who, exactly, was here, Ryo?”

 

“Dee. But…but it wasn't Dee, it wasn't...” He spoke quietly, but his voice was tinged with desperation, and he looked up at them suddenly. “Was it?”

 

Dean honestly had no idea how to answer that. Hell, he was still waiting for Sam to give him the heads up, and he felt a surge of resentment when Sam leaned against the wall and casually gave Ryo the explanation that he didn't even see fit to share with his own brother.

 

“No, Ryo, it wasn't. I promise you, Dee would never scare you like you've obviously been scared.”

 

The tension in Ryo's shoulders didn't lessen, but his head dropped forward until his forehead touched his knees, and he breathed a long, shaky sigh. Then he looked up, and only then did the Winchesters notice the redness of his eyes. But his tone was perfectly steady when he spoke. “Was it another shapeshifter?”

 

Again, Sam shook his head, and again, Dean stayed silent while he waited for answers.

 

“No…I don't think so…actually, I'm sure of it. Shapeshifters…they just…their eyes don't do that…”

 

Ryo looked quickly at him, his gaze shrewd enough to make Dean uncomfortable, and Ryo wasn't even facing him. Sam, though, barely noticed.

 

“It doesn't matter how I know what he looked like. The point is, I know he wasn't a shapeshifter. It was a demon.”

 

Dean snapped to attention, and Sam knew he recognized the significance. But Ryo just looked puzzled—well, to the extent that he seemed to be feeling anything right now.

 

“Isn't that what a shapeshifter is?”

 

“No. Shapeshifters…well, the easiest…the simplest…way to explain it is that they're humans, but usually horribly deformed, hated to the point where they just…learn to become someone else. But a demon uses already-established bodies, taking over the actual soul, with the person completely unable to do anything about it. And their power is extreme...”

 

When his voice trailed off and didn't pick up again, Dean pushed himself away from the wall, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and speaking up for the first time. “What kind is it? What's the story? Yeah, he's being the same way with me,” he added at Ryo's half-voiced question.

 

Sam ignored that last bit—or maybe he just didn't hear it. “I'm not sure of everything yet—it's gonna take some research—but…well, we were right, Dean. We have heard of something like this before. We haven't fought it, but we have heard of it. It's in Dad's journal, I'm almost sure…”

 

Once again, he fell silent, and Dean nearly screamed with impatience. “Sammy, I love ya and all, but man, if you don't stop doing that I'm gonna kill ya dead.”

 

“…What?”

 

“Talk, little brother!”

 

“Oh…well, like I said, I don't know all the facts. I've only skimmed the journal a few thousand times, after all. But I think I do know why he picked Dee.”

 

“You're not gonna do the quiet thing again, are you?” Dean asked.

 

“Yeah, I have an easier time getting information out of mass murderers,” Ryo said, with just a touch of humor.

 

Sam glared at them both, and said curtly, “It appears as a black mist, and it feeds on guilt. That's what attracted it to Dee in the first place. It must have come after your fight.”

 

“But…but if it's attracted to guilt, why aren't there more…incidents? I mean…guilt is a pretty common thing…”

 

“Yes, but it takes great amounts—and probably exactly the wrong circumstances—to make it happen. Dee must have been in agony…” After another beat of silence, Sam sighed. “But the problem is, I don't know anything more, and I don't know how to get it out of him.”

 

“What?” Ryo's voice rang through the room before he stifled himself, and he slid down the headboard a little, his face white.

 

“Don't worry,” Dean said quickly, a little alarmed. “We'll figure it out.”

 

“But we can't do that here,” Sam added. “We need to get back to the motel. And Ryo, you two have to come with us, obviously. I don't think he'll be back tonight, but it's probably best not to take chances.”

 

Ryo didn't seem surprised by this, but he didn't seem at all happy about it either, and later, the reason became clear as Ryo groaned softly.

 

“Oh, God in Heaven, what am I supposed to tell Bikky?”

 

XXX

 

Dean and Sam waited in the living room while Ryo woke his son. It didn't take more than a minute, so apparently he hadn't said anything about the situation yet. Bikky came out with none of the grouchiness in his expression expected in a kid who'd just been woken up in the middle of the night. Rather, he looked worried, and a little freaked out. His eyebrows shot up, disappearing under his long blond bangs, when he saw the Winchesters, but then he visibly stifled his questions.

 

So that's coming.

 

The drive back to the motel was absolutely silent. Ryo sat in the back with his arm around Bikky, who stared out the window with an inscrutable expression. The quiet didn't bother Sam—actually, it was rather relaxing—but it made Dean extremely uncomfortable, and they didn't go two miles before he turned on his Zeppelin. No one in the car reacted to the sudden noise blasting from the speakers—Sam was too used to it to care, and Ryo and Bikky didn't even seem to take note of it—though Sam noted that the latter absently began to bob his head in time to the music, swaying back and forth without seeming to realize he was doing it.

 

Dean was a little surprised at Ryo's silence. The young cop must be brimming with questions and fears—he was probably scared to death. And besides that, there was no way he could fully comprehend the things he'd been exposed to. In Dean's experience, people who didn't understand what the Winchesters did never ceased to ask questions, but Ryo wasn't voicing a single one. He was just sitting there in the backseat, staring out the window, as if only his body was in the car, and the important parts of him were somewhere else entirely.

 

Now, on the one hand, the silence was a welcome change from the panicked—and often unanswerable—questions they usually got. But then again, it was slightly eerie, in that it indicated that Ryo was taking this calmly. And…well, come to think of it, he seemed to take everything calmly. Like he couldn't be rattled, no matter what he saw. Like there was nothing inside…

 

Okay, that's it. We need to finish this thing, ASAP. I have got go get out of here before I start spewing poetry or something…

 

As if responding to his thoughts, the Impala sped up with double her usual ease.

 

XXX

 

Sam entered the motel first, and headed straight for his laptop, which was set up on their small table, John's journal resting next to it. Dean knew how to use them both, but Sam…Sam could find absolutely anything in either one or the other. That, combined with the fact that he had a knack for finding exactly what they needed—nothing more, nothing less—and his seemingly endless patience with research in general, meant that he was usually the one who did most of that work during their hunts.

 

“You guys can take that bed,” Dean told Ryo and Bikky over his shoulder as they swallowed the younger Winchester in, pointing to the bed closest to the wall and furthest from the door. That was usually Sam's bed—Dean always slept nearest the wall—but Sam wouldn't care if he had to share with Dean. Of course, it was entirely possible that he wouldn't go to bed at all tonight…

 

“Thank you,” Ryo said quietly, sitting down with his back against the headboard.

 

Bikky took the other spot, but he didn't relax even as much as Ryo allowed himself to. Instead, he sat cross-legged, facing the cop, and said, “Okay, Ryo, what's going on?”

 

If Ryo winced, it was purely internal, and Dean shrugged when the other man looked over at him. “Your kid, your decision.”

 

“And don't lie. You can only lie at work, or when one of us has a gun to our head,” Bikky added, sounding way too experienced in the matter.

 

Ryo smiled wanly, and held out a hand. Bikky took it without hesitation, and let Ryo squeeze it until both their knuckles turned white. “You always could read me like a book.”

 

“I think most anyone can,” Bikky replied lightly, but his eyes were the opposite of light. “Come on, Ryo. This is you and me. I'm your son. Tell me what's going on with you.”

And Ryo did. He told Bikky what was going on, and what had gone on. He even talked about the shapeshifter that had led to his meeting the Winchesters, which apparently he'd never told Bikky about. Dean laid back in his bed and closed his eyes, listening carefully.

 

“So basically Dee's gone evil and that's why we're here,” Bikky said when Ryo finished. His tone was completely flat, and Dean opened his eyes and glanced over at the teen. Bikky had shifted at some point during the talk, and now he was facing Ryo fully, one leg dangling over the side of the bed and the other pulled up to his chest, his chin resting on it as he looked at Ryo. When Ryo nodded at his summary, Bikky didn't say anything for a long time, and Dean could almost feel Ryo's apprehension as a physical thing.

 

Then Bikky dropped his arms from his knees, sat up, and shrugged. “Okay.”

 

“Um…beg pardon?” Ryo asked politely.

 

Bikky rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Ryo. What did you think I was gonna say? That maybe you should take a long vacation? That maybe the job is finally getting to you? That it sounds crazy? Because in case you've forgotten, I'm the one who is always telling you about ghosts and stuff.”

 

“Well…well, yeah, but…” Ryo said, trailing off uncertainly.

 

“But nothing. This is New York City. Weirdness is a way of life here. I've lived here my whole life, and I've seen things. I just never told you how much, basically because that stuff's done for me…over.” He shrugged, and it was astonishing how truly indifferent he was, and in spite of himself, Dean was impressed. Then, quite suddenly, Bikky turned on him, and asked, “So what do you guys have to do with all this?”

 

Dean was a little disconcerted by the directness of the question and the unflinching stare, but Sam—who was, after all, staring intently at his computer screen and therefore impervious to direct questions and unflinching stares—answered easily. “We're working for your dad.”

 

“Dude, you're paying them?” Bikky asked incredulously.

 

“Uh…no, not exactly…” Ryo replied, a little uncomfortably. “Am I supposed to be paying you?”

 

Dean shrugged. “Why bother? No one else does. Then again, I guess it isn't really the type of gig that pays.”

 

“But what do you do?” Bikky asked insistently. “Like, what's your job?”

 

Sam had gone back to staring at the computer, so this one was left to poor Dean, who was afraid of kids of all kinds, especially the ones that tended to ask awkward questions.

 

“Well…uh…we…” Dean cast a slightly desperate look at his brother, but Sam was turning a page in the journal and didn't notice. “We hunt,” he finished the sentence at last. “Things like…like this. Demons and spirits and stuff.”

 

“Like…Ghostbusters?”

 

Dean must have looked physically pained or something, because Bikky looked sheepish. “Uh…sorry. Okay, so you hunt…like…evil?”

 

“To put it really simply, yeah.”

 

“And you kill things?”

 

“If we can. Sometimes we just have to be satisfied with sending them away.”

 

“Okay. And how does one discover a talent for this?”

 

Sammy, please get me out of this conversation… “Um…I don't think you really do. We've always just…done it.” Now please don't ask any more questions.

 

Bikky, however, did not seem interested in heeding the silent warning, because he went right on talking, to ask one more thing.

 

“Is it fun?”

 

Thank God Sam chose that moment to start paying attention and turned around, because otherwise Dean would have done one of two things: strangled the poor kid, or ran screaming from the room.

 

But, no, Sam turned right around in his chair, abandoning his research, and fixed Bikky with the Sam Winchester thousand-yard stare. This was a look that only Sam could adequately perform—like his puppy eyes, it was something that neither Dean nor their father had ever been able to imitate. However, unlike the puppy eyes—which Dean had been on the receiving end of all too frequently—Sam rarely used the thousand-yard stare against his family.

 

Watching Sam stare at poor, unfortunate Bikky, Dean thought that maybe it was too bad that Sam never became a lawyer. If that Look were released upon a defenseless mass murderer…

 

Well, the human evil would be seriously cut down, anyway.

 

Bikky squirmed uncomfortably under the weight of Sam's gaze, and Dean tried not to smirk. It was mean to laugh at someone else's pain, but…but this was funny! And besides, it would be interesting to see which one of them cracked first.

 

“Oh…okay…uh…not fun, then…um…I hafta…excuse me…”

 

And with this rather confused jumble of words, Bikky leapt to his feet and practically ran into the bathroom, distinguishable by being the only other room in the place.

 

“Jeez, Sam,” Dean said, as the bathroom door closed. “How do you do that?”

 

“What did you do? You freaked out my son,” Ryo murmured, but he didn't look angry. Actually, he looked perilously close to amusement. “I didn't know that was even possible…”

 

Sam just shrugged, without the slightest change of expression, and turned back to the task at hand.

 

XXX

 

It was almost three hours before Bikky dropped reluctantly off to sleep, and Ryo didn't fall asleep at all. He stubbornly refused to allow himself that luxury—not until they found a way to help Dee. Dean stopped arguing with him after a while—Sam was singularly unhelpful and stubbornly silent—and just let the young cop wallow in his own thoughts. Dean himself spent quite a bit of time trying to get Sam to take a break and get some sleep in the only available bed, but Sam kept saying “no.” Nothing else…just a quiet “no.” But he popped pills from the bottle in his pocket like it was going out of style, and that was how Dean was able to figure it out.

 

 

Sam was hurting. They were coming closer and closer to his vision, and he was hurting because of it. So, naturally, he was cranky—and, naturally, it was probably safest to leave him be.

 

But Dean wasn't interested in safety.

 

“Sam, come on, you're not helping anyone by killing yourself—”

 

Sam scowled, but kept his voice down, quieter than the almost-muted TV Ryo had on in a rather sad attempt to distract himself. “Dean, stop being so dramatic and leave me alone. I don't want to sleep.”

 

“Well, then it's a good thing I don't care what you want right now. You have to get a little sleep, man!”

 

“No, what I have to do is get this research done so we can finish this and make my damn headache go away!” Sam snapped, losing a little control over his tightly-reined-in temper.

 

Dean stared at him for a long time, then sighed in defeat and growled, “Whatever, Sammy,” then stomped back over to the bed and threw himself down on it, closing his eyes, because, hey, he could still listen for trouble…

 

XXX

 

“Dean. Dean…wake up, damnit…DEAN!”

 

Thump.

 

“Gyah! I'm up, jeez! What?”

 

Sam rolled his eyes from where he sat at the foot of the bed, the position from which he'd just launched a pillow-missile at his soundly-sleeping brother. On the other side of the small room, Ryo was still sitting at the foot of the other bed, flipping through channels boredly. Dean couldn't believe he hadn't fallen asleep.

 

“I've figured it out.”

 

Sam kept his voice down as he said this—actually, he was barely speaking above a whisper—but he may as well have shouted, the way Ryo reacted, shooting up off the bed and leaping over to them with the agility of a cat. He settled himself on the bed and gave Sam a look so hopeful that it was almost heartbreaking.

 

Sam reached out and gave his shoulder a pat, then dropped his hand and began whispering his discoveries in an urgent voice while Bikky slept obliviously on.

 

He talked for a long time, telling everything he'd found out about their quarry. Not surprisingly, he'd been correct about his the demon thing. But that was where all predictability came to an end, because, basically, this demon was a serious rebel. It followed none of the “rules” that other creatures did and was basically an enigma to someone like—oh, say, Dean—who was used to having things follow set and exact patterns.

 

So, the older Winchester was understandably surprised when his brother painted a tale, not of some random, nameless evil crawling out of the primordial ooze bent on causing mayhem and destruction, but the story of…a man. A human man in his mid-twenties who seemed absolutely normal. This man had lived among the Greeks way back when they'd basically run the Earth, so the fact that he had a boyfriend wasn't exactly out of the ordinary.

 

Anyway, this young man—whose name had long since been lost in history—had supposedly been deeply, deeply in love with this other guy, and apparently his feelings had been returned tenfold, and for a while things seemed to be going perfectly. But sadly, that isn't often the way the world works, and the simplest things can bring your whole world to a crashing halt.

 

To this day, no one had been able to figure out exactly what brought the argument on. The sad part was, it was probably a tiny thing, easily forgotten—and certainly no reason to take a knife and stick it in your lover's heart.

 

But that was exactly what the demon—then just a man—had done, just hours before he went and used the ancient dark magics to demonize himself—a ritual that, apparently, had not been attempted—let alone completed successfully—before or since.

 

“So it appears that `normal' was actually code for `stark, raving mad,' and now he's going around taking over peoples' bodies—if the circumstances are right—and forcing him to basically relive that moment, keeping everything except the weapon—which seems to change with the times—the same. I guess you two just…provided the right circumstances with your fight,” Sam concluded.

 

Dean leaned back against the headboard of their bed, turning the new information over in his mind. “Okay. Then why only when a person feels guilty or whatever? I mean, if this demon is going after the fingerprints of what it was feeling when it…turned…then wouldn't it go after anger?”

 

Sam shrugged. “Not if all it was feeling at the time was guilt. That may even be the reason he changed himself—to escape the guilt. I don't know. I don't want to get into his mind any more than you do.”

 

“Does it even matter?” Ryo burst out suddenly, and it was obvious he'd been trying so hard not to ask that it had finally just exploded out of him. But he didn't shout—fatherly instinct kept him speaking quietly. “I mean, have you figured out what we're going to do?”

 

Sam looked at him for a moment, then sighed and said, “Yes. I have a solution. But you're not gonna like it.”

 

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AN: Yeah, I know. I haven't updated in a while. I have no excuse. I suck. I am crabby. Review, please. That is all.