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A sense of peace and wellbeing washed over Sam and Dean the moment they passed the town limits. That was how they knew they were in deep shit.
Or deep something, anyway. Perhaps not s—.
They hadn't even been looking for a case, exactly. More like, Sam had been staring into his beer at the bar while Dean juggled a detachment from a bachelorette party when he'd heard the talk two stools down. It was of that big, dark cloud from a while back, the one that had strafed through Robeplin County. There was this one town, rumor had it, that had been spared. Spang in the middle of all the action, and the Darkness had never even touched it.
Harmony, the town was called. Harmony, North Carolina.
Sam hadn't been able to get much more than that. None of the people talking about had seen it for themselves—as these things tended to go. But it was a more solid lead than they usually got, or at the very least one that would be easy enough to track down.
So they had.
One minute Sam had been watching the HARMONY CITY LIMITS sign approach with a knot of—fuck, everything: apprehension about what might be ahead; the low-grade, unending terror over what was chewing through the world that passed in Winchester-speak for worry; the dregs and residues left behind resentments long evaporated yet somehow always staining the psyche; etc., etc.—wearing an ulcer in his stomach. The next, total peace.
Sam shot a glance at his brother. It wasn't a glance of alarm. But it would have been, if he'd been alarmed. And he would have been alarmed if he'd been capable of alarm. Which he wasn't.
What the f— What on Earth.
Dean had a similarly not-that-freaked-out look on his face. "You feeling this?"
"Yeah."
"What even."
"I dunno."
They drove for a minute in silence. Dean had slowed when they crossed over the limits of the town, not so much because of the reduced speed sign as because of the effect that had overtaken them. "It's kind of…nice?" Dean looked disgruntled about it.
Sam examined himself. Physically, he felt fine. Mentally, emotionally, he felt…whole. Before, he'd felt conflicted. That was normal. That was his baseline. Now he did not feel conflicted. Five minutes ago, on top of all the other things, he'd still been feeling short-tempered and irritated at Dean for badgering him into taking aspirin he didn't even need. That was gone; he'd let it go. Ten minutes ago, he'd been half-chasing feelings of guilt about letting the Darkness out as those emotions made their familiar tight circle around defensive anger and jealousy over Amara and self-recrimination over that. Those feelings had lifted from him, too. An hour ago, he'd been tracing the outlines of a favorite mental picture of a way he might contrive to die for good, as was his wont. Now he felt none of the pull of that old familiar fantasy, either. He felt all right.
"Nice is a good word for it," Sam said carefully.
"Something's really wrong here, right?"
"Oh, yeah."
The first outward sign came when they passed a KinderCare. This was a brick building with a novelty tower affixed to one corner, wood-grained plastic, which was in turn roofed in bright red. FUN, screamed the architectural folly. KIDS LOVE THIS STUFF, advised the fiberglass dinosaur beside the door. NEARLY ALL OF OUR STAFF PASSED BACKGROUND CHECKS, suggested the playground made entirely of rubber boards.
There were no children in sight.
There were no children audible, either, when Sam and Dean stopped the car and go out. Not in the KinderCare, which had no cars in the parking lot or lights on inside. Not in any of the yards of any of the houses up and down the street, despite that it was two in the afternoon on a Saturday and unseasonably warm.
And yet—and yet it didn't feel like there weren't children there. Sam and Dean had been in places like that. Cursed towns where the children had been stolen away, 'burgs after they'd been unlucky enough to have fallen afoul of a Pied Piper, the like. Even the quasi-urban slice of suburbia where they'd taken out that shtriga had had a certain, indefinable hush to it that was distinctive. It wasn't present here.
Somehow, that did not make Sam feel better.
Of course, it wasn't like he was feeling all that bad.
Gosh, his mental health was good right now.
A car went by as they stood looking around, then another one. Normal. Serene. And they'd seen a couple of people going back and forth from their garages or mailboxes, could hear some roofers working nearby. So the place did function, there were people here. Sam looked at Dean and shrugged. "Find a diner?" he said.
The Corner Cafe offered all-day breakfast, but only until two in the afternoon. The place was locked and deserted by the time Sam and Dean arrived. So they were looking up and down Main Street with a poster promising a "Clean, Family Friendly!" comedy routine in a nearby high school auditorium at their backs, waiting for something to strike them as a clue, when they saw it.
Well. Not saw, precisely.
Sam went to step down from the door stoop of the Corner Cafe, and in those three inches between stoop and sidewalk, something shifted. At the same time, nothing shifted: the street, the cars in it, the shops opposite and the blue sky and the windsock trailing from Faithful Spirit Christian Supply Store's sign remained. The pair of men approaching down their side of the sidewalk passed in front of Sam and Dean, conversation uninterrupted, and rounded the corner.
But none of that could distract from the way the colors of things somehow pried off of them, one reality unlaminating momentarily from another until they stood distinct, and suppurating horror between.
In the layer behind, Sam thought he could hear— Thought he could see—
The gap snapped closed.
Sam grabbed his brother's arm.1 "Dean," he said urgently. He did not feel the urgency, but he'd been in situations like this so often that acting it out took less effort than not.
"Yeah," said Dean, and Sam wondered if he looked unnerved in the way that he himself had sounded urgent.
This was a head trip. And the trippiest part was that it felt…fine.
"Could you hear them?"
"The children?" Dean looked grim, and Sam chose to believe that that was real, if only because he wished he could feel it himself. "And what sounded like a whole lot of other people? Yeah."
"What in the heck is going on here?"
"No doggone clue. But—" Dean broke off.
Sam followed his gaze. Dean was staring after an SUV, ugly and oversized, but Sam could see nothing special about it. "What?"
"C'mon, I think I know somebody we can ask."
They fished their fed suits out of the Impala and changed behind the KinderCare ("Dude, we're gonna get arrested!" "Well, it's not like there's any kids here, is it?"), and Sam followed Dean back along the route they'd walked into town. Dean turned in at one of a series of postwar bungalows, seeming at random. Then Sam saw the minivan parked in the driveway, and he got it. The rear window was partially obscured by the yellow and black diamond as on that SUV downtown and a billion other cars like it: BABY ON BOARD.
The woman who answered the door wore a sweat shirt and jeans with her blond hair in a ponytail. She looked about thirty, and the mudroom behind her was tidy and bright. It had a peg board. A baseball glove, a pink and purple bike helmet, and a pair of in-line skates with Ninja Turtles on them hung beside the adult-sized coats there.
The woman smiled. It wasn't fake, exactly, yet it lacked something. "Can I help you?"
They flashed badges. "FBI," Sam said with an authority he did not feel. "Ma'am, do you know where your children are?"
The woman—Callie—perched on an ottoman she'd pulled up to the coffee table in order to face them on the couch, hands hanging in her lap, a faint frown creasing her face. "Can I get you anything, agents? We don't drink coffee, but we have water, juice…."
She trailed off of her own accord. She remained gazing at her own hands where they were laced loosely together.
Sam and Dean traded a glance. Dean cleared his throat. "No, thank you. So, Mrs. Mitchell…." Dean looked about the living room once more. There were signs that children were meant to be here: foam alphabet tiles sitting in a wooden holder, a Cinderella-shaped pillow on the sofa. But as in the mudroom, these things were positioned neatly, placed and then left untouched. The Mitchells could have just been tidy, Sam supposed. If not for everything that was so obviously wrong here.
No. Not wrong. Sam knew wrong; Sam had felt wrong. Wrong had a taste, a metallic tang at the back of your tongue. This was a different feeling. Not of wrong, but of missing.
Missing like his anxiety, missing like his depression and anger. Missing like every deep, essential part of him.2
"Callie." Sam injected all the sympathy and gentleness he'd cultivated for witness interrogations such as this into the name. It was quite easy, too. It felt right. What nice things sympathy and gentleness were. And anyway, he didn't feel too much of them, so it was no burden. "What happened to the children here? Where are your son and daughter? Where's your baby?"
Callie finally raised her eyes to his, and Sam could see the ghost of devastation there. But only the ghost. The substance—that had been evacuated somewhere, like a blown-out egg. "Can't you see them?" she asked.
And then Sam did.
He saw the exact moment Dean did, too. They sat, him and Dean and Mrs. Callie Mitchell, in the bright-nice parlor of her bungalow, and watched what they could not see. Not properly. It could not be brought into focus. The baby's crying, the little girl striking the little boy with the toy truck they were both fighting over, the friction and clamor were caught in a background layer, always behind no matter how one approached.
It felt like seeing some kind of anti-Magic Eye picture. And then, like a real Magic Eye, between one blink and the next it collapsed.
Mrs. Mitchell looked shaken. Sam couldn't have said whether or not she really was. He wasn't, but he understood that he ought to be.
"I can't reach them," she whispered. "Jeff can't, neither. Someone took them put them out of reach. They're always there, but they're never here."
After a minute, she turned her head away from where briefly they'd watched the not-scene at the kitchen table and smiled at them. It was a sincere, warm smile. "But it's all right. What we have, me and Jeff, it's good. Not exciting, I suppose, but we're good for each other. Isn't that the main thing? And our babies, at least I know that nobody can hurt them. No one can touch them, so at least they're safe."
Sam and Dean returned her smile. Theirs wasn't sincere, but at least it was easy.
"So now what?" Sam asked as they walked back to the Impala.
Beside him, Dean loosened his tie. "Honestly? I dunno."
"Me, neither. That should bother me, right?"
"Probably. Hey, wanna hit a bar?"
"Yeah, all right."
They got a booth. Sam got chamomile tea, Dean got milk, and they both ordered food.
Sam squirmed a little in his seat. His Taurus was digging into his back; he really ought to have left it in the car. They both ought to've. He'd mention it to Dean when they left.
"So, any theories?" he asked while Dean studied the plastic placard listing appetizers on one side and desserts on the other.
"Curse? Somebody dug something up or tore something down, maybe?" Their drinks arrived, Sam's in an individual service with a mug and a little pot of hot water, Dean's in one of those pebbled, translucent red plastic cups. Dean tore the paper off his straw with relish and immediately sucked the level of liquid in his glass down an inch.
"Yeah, could be." This didn't feel like a curse. "We should ask around at the diner in the morning, see if any new construction projects have kicked off recently."
"Good idea."
"Thanks, Dean. Hey, nice work spotting that minivan's baby decal and remembering it, earlier, that was smart."
Dean preened a bit. "Thanks, Sammy. You know, I don't tell you enough, but you're a really capable hunter. Not just a hunter, either, but…y'know, capable. You're a really capable adult."
"You know, I know that, but it's still nice to hear. Thanks."
"You're welcome."
They nursed their beverages for a while, just relaxing. It was kind of nice. It was easier to think, Sam realized, without that background hum of angst. He didn't care very much about doing it, but it was simpler.
"Hey, you know what else is missing from this town," he said, when that clarity presently granted him an insight.
Dean took a bite of his burger. "Mmm?"
"Animals."
Dean paused, chewing thoroughly, then swallowing. "You're right. Not a one. No dogs. No birds."
"Not even squirrels."
"Now, that, that is weird."
Sam enjoyed his salad. He'd asked for extra chicken, a proper amount of protein for his large frame. He really hadn't been budgeting properly for his nutritional requirements lately. Dean munched on a piece of broccoli from his side of vegetables.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"I think this bar is an Applebee's."
Dean looked around. His straw slurped at the bottom of the giant red cup. "So it is, Sammy. So it is."
It was coming on toward evening when they left the Applebee's, so Sam and Dean went ahead and found a motel. It wasn't like they had any particular ideas about where to go next, and it didn't seem nice to bother people after dark. Particularly on a Saturday. Families—well, spouses and grandparents, anyway—were probably sitting down to dinner together, or settling in for a movie night. Friends were very likely setting up foosball tables and games of darts. Consenting adults might well be initiating loving and attentive foreplay.
Their room at the Knight's Court wasn't half bad. No mold in the bathroom or anything, and everything in it worked. That was convenient. Sam had had very little experience of convenience in his life, overall. Turned out it was nice.
Sam and Dean lay side by side on their respective beds. Dean lay on the one under the heat vent, because he ran colder. Sam lay on the one nearest the door, where he could get more air. It was a sensible, comfortable arrangement.
Dean flexed his toes, one of which protruded through a hole in his sock.
"Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever think about…. Okay, hunting, sure. Hunting's part of our life. It's not going anywhere. But it could be more normal than it is, right?"
"I guess," Sam said slowly.
"So do you ever think about, say, us, hunting, right, saving the world, doing what we do, but maybe with some support or something? Working with more of a network, maybe even setting up separate bases so we can help more people, and make our own friends, and have our own styles? Something where not every problem ends in self-sacrifice. Keeping up the fight, of course, but just…not so tangled up in each other?"
On the other bed, Sam chewed his lip. "Doesn't sound like us."
"But do you ever think about it?" Dean pressed.
"I cannot say that I have, historically, thought about hunting in that way. Or living that way generally. I mean, parts of it, sure, building up a hunter's network could be really useful, but not so much the whole package."
"Are you thinking about it now?"
"It is suddenly the only thing I can think about."
"Huh."
"Yeah, 's weird."
"It'd be a lot less stressful that way, though."
"Oh, definitely. Like, how many of our gray hairs are just from worrying about each other, you know? How many crises would be a lot more manageable if we could just keep it all in perspective? How many could we have avoided?"
"Oh, man, so many."
They fell silent, Dean with his hands laced together behind his head, Sam with his over his stomach.
"We should get some sleep," Dean said finally. "It's a good opportunity, not like we get a lot of early nights. We should make the most of it, sleep's important."
"It really is. Did you know that shift workers are, like, three times more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than people working a normal schedule?"
Dean turned his head toward him on his pillow. "Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Huh. No, I did not know that. Makes sense, I guess."
"I guess it does."
Dean turned back to looking up at the ceiling. Sam continued to look up at the ceiling.
"…It's kind of early, though," said Dean.
"Yeah."
"But there's just not a lot else to do, you know?"
"We could watch TV."
"I guess, but I dunno. Rots your brain they say. Plus the only thing that's on is a Chuck Norris marathon."
"That's a lot of violence."
"Yeah, especially right before bed."
"Yeah. But I'm not sure I can sleep at 8:00 in the evening."
"Me, either."
Sam scrunched the toes of his right foot so that the joint in the big one popped. It felt great. "…I've got 4G. And YouTube. Want me to put some ocean sounds on on my phone?"
"Oh, God, yes."
And Sam did, and they went to sleep. It was good-quality sleep free from nightmares. Dean did have a pleasant dream involving a woman, but he didn't objectify her.
They woke well rested and at a reasonable hour. Sam opened his eyes and looked across at the other bed.
Dean's eyes were wide. His body language—not that Sam was paying especially close attention to the lines of Dean's body, obviously; he was his brother—was still as relaxed as Sam felt, but he had opened his eyes wide in, if nothing else, a remembered signal of horror.
"What the heck, Sammy," he said. "What the heck."
The Corner Cafe smelled of warmth, of eggs and pancakes and grits. The Formica tables inside were shabby, the color worn through in patches the size of elbows, but clean. The waitresses all smiled, and the menus didn't stick together. It was a very nice establishment.
They'd picked the right place: it looked like half the town congregated here. Sam and Dean folded themselves into a half-width booth in the corner. It wasn't the only table open; it just seemed more considerate not to take up extra seats by hogging a full-sized booth.
Their waitress soon arrived, laying laminated menus before each of them. "Morning, gentlemen. Our specials this morning are the Heart-Healthy Oatmeal, that's with a side of fresh fruit, or the spinach-egg-white wrap with lowfat mozzarella. Can I get you started with something to drink?"
Dean smiled at her and discreetly flashed his badge behind the rim of the table. "Actually, I was hoping maybe I could get a little fresh…hot…tea."
"Oh, that sounds good, actually," Sam said. "D'you have green?"
"No, sorry, but we do have a nice oolong, just got it in."
"I'll have that."
"What about you, agent, oolong or ceylon?"
"I'll do the ceylon. Nice and strong, though."
"You got it."
Only after she had disappeared did Dean visibly shake himself. It brought Sam back to himself, too.
"Dude!" Dean hissed, leaning across the table. "What are we doing?"
"I don't know!" Sam hissed back.
"I don't drink tea for breakfast!"
"Neither do I!"
"Yes, you do, you're always doing girly stuff like that!"
"No, I'm not! And that's sexist!"
"Oh, yikes. Yeah, it is, like along three separate axes. Sorry."
"Apology accepted."
"Well, that answers that," said the waitress. Sam started and banged his knee on the underside of the table.
Dean gazed up at her, charming smile in place. "Answers what, ma'am?" he asked, smooth as honey.
Their waitperson—Susan, according to her name tag—set down their tea pensively. She was in her late 40s or early 50s, gray-dusted brown hair up in a clip. Her regional accent wasn't as strong as that of most people they'd interacted with, and the bright smile from when she'd seated them was considerably tempered. "I wasn't sure if it would affect outsiders," she said, extracting an order pad absently from her pocket. "Up until now, I hadn't really gotten a chance to check because who in the world comes to Harmony, but you're clearly not from around here and you're definitely under the influence."
That got their attention. "Under the influence of what?" Dean demanded.
Well, maybe not a demand. More of a respectful request which bore in mind the possibility of personal boundaries on her part of which he might not be aware.
"I've got break in an hour," said Susan. "Meet me around the back beside the hardware store. Now, what can I get you?"
Dean flipped his menu to check the back real quick. "Uh, yeah, can I get two ham biscuits, please?"
"Oh, you don't want that, honey, the cholesterol's like rat poison and those poor hogs suffer so."
"Valid. I'll have the oatmeal."
Sam studied the asphalt beneath his feet. It held the usual collection of cigarette butts you'd find behind a hardware store in a town like this, but unusually aged. Their father had taught them early on to pay attention to litter. Of this assortment, some were just fraying tufts of filters; the most recent, Sam would put at a few months old.
"Something else," said Dean, shading his eyes as he scanned the parking lot for their waitress-cum-informant. "This place seem a little monochromatic to you, for eastern Carolina?"
"More than a little."
Dean bit his lip, nodding slowly to himself. Sam knew he was thinking of the background layer they had glimpsed. Or, perhaps, of whatever ineffable wedge was keeping it apart from experiential reality.
He smacked Dean on the arm.3 Susan was approaching from the opposite end of the lot.
When she reached them, she jammed her hands in her pockets, looking—not unhappy, but the closest to it of anyone they'd met here. Like she disagreed with the cosmic order, but she knew they could come together for a dialogue about it.
"Wish I could smoke," she said.
"Why can't you?" Sam asked.
"Because I don't even want to anymore. Who are you boys?"
They made the introductions, dropping the FBI aliases from the conversation because it somehow seemed beside the point by now. "How long have you lived here, Susan…?" Dean raised his eyebrows politely.
"Burney. All my life, like everybody else in this town."
Something twanged at the back of Sam's brain. He remembered walking down the high street, cataloguing the different businesses, their signs— "Burney? As in, Burney & Derrick, Attorneys at Law?"
Susan Burney smiled ruefully. Although not so ruefully as to suggest toxic levels of animus or resentment. "That's the one."
"What influence were you talking about before?" Dean asked. "When did you first know something was going on here?"
Burney stared off across the parking lot. A billboard there advised citizens that their local library was an ideal spot for recreation, education, finding service opportunities, and a variety of public meetings. "Davy," she said.
"Who's Davy?"
Sam consulted his memory of the law office's sign. "David Derrick?"
Lips pressed together, Susan nodded. "We were partners. And, well, partners. Not in bed, we were never that to each other, but married enough for all that."
"What happened?"
Burney appeared to gather her thoughts. "Davy was always infuriating. Even in grade school—always mouthing off to teachers, pulling crazy stunts, leaping first and looking never in general. A lot of that stuff I don't even think he did because he really wanted to; it was a role he played. Trying to be the maverick. Propping up the Legend of Davy Derrick.
"The only reason he ever got out of half the trouble he got himself into was because he had me. Reliable, level-headed, risk-averse me. I might not have had his style, but I was every bit as good at arguing people into submission. Better, even." She smiled a little at herself. "What a cliché. 'Larger-Than-Life Men and the Women Who Make It Possible.' After a while, he took it so much for granted I'd make the consequences go away that I think he stopped believing in consequences. Like the way people forget to worry whether there's a God when there's nothing much to make them uncomfortable."
Sam could imagine some of what wasn't being said: that despite Susan's adroitness in smoothing over his escapades, Davy Derrick's recklessness had placed certain limits on his career. That Susan Burney, had she not thrown in her lot with a flash-bang friend, might have gone a lot farther than the Robeplin County Courthouse. "Why'd you stay?" he asked softly.
She met his eyes directly. "Because I got a thrill out of it. Especially early on. What is there to make a town like this bearable without a friend like Davy? And we were inseparable. The whole relationship was unbalanced, no question. I enabled him, guilty as charged. But there was always a lot of magic, too, and sometimes Davy is the crusader he wants to see himself as, and for better or worse, we completed each other."4
Dean was listening with a look Sam hadn't seen on his face since Dean had gotten sucked into a telenovela while laid up back in Rufus's cabin, when he'd sat with his eyes glued to the screen and his mouth hanging open to receive a forgotten fist of popcorn. "What happened?" he asked Burney, hushed.
Sam added empathy for strangers to his mental tally of freaky phenomena in this town.
Burney sighed and smiled ruefully. "Would you believe it? That rat basket went and reformed."
Sam took a moment to process this. "But isn't that a good thing?"
A succession of expressions crossed Susan Burney's face until it settled on no expression at all. "You'd think so," she said neutrally.
"Yeah, I would," said Dean. "He, what? Stopped pulling a bunch of stunts and started appreciating everything you've done for him? Acknowledged you as your own person, maybe? Learned to wipe his own butt and realized the value of a good friend? How's that not a happy ending?"
Burney chewed at her lip, a curiously young gesture on her. "I always wished that Davy would get his act together," she said. "I did. And it's not our problems that I miss, but something's missing anyway. Something got taken out, taken away. Maybe it was just too easy. Maybe I wanted us to have to fight for it. Maybe I just wanted some role in it happening." She shrugged. "I'm not sure why that matters. I'm not sure, feeling this at peace with it, that it really does. I've always been a results-oriented person. Davy's the one who stands on principle; he's the one who's had the luxury to."
She inserted her hands into the pockets of her apron and contemplated the asphalt. Her forehead was smooth and unlined. "Anyway, that's the story."
Sam and Dean traded looks.
"Wait a second," said Sam. "If that's all that happened, why are you waiting tables at a greasy spoon? Did all that really bother so much you didn't even want to run the law firm with Davy anymore?"
"Oh, he's out on his ass, too. There is no law firm."
"What? Why?"
Burney looked at him, and then she slowly opened her arms to encompass the whole of Harmony. "You see anybody hiring a lawyer here in Happyville?"
Sam and Dean conferred and agreed that while their interlude with Susan Burney, Esq. had offered worthwhile backstory and touching character vignettes, it had not done as much to advance the plot as hoped. "We've gotta figure out where all this is coming from," said Dean.
"Got a plan?" Sam asked.
"Wander around until we find something?"
"Sounds good."
They each took one end of town, Dean heading out to canvas around the Piggly Wiggly after dropping Sam down by the library.
As he worked his way down Main Street, Sam paid more attention to the conversations of passersby he'd previously tuned out. The two businessmen gesturing animatedly as they walked were each other's competition, but apparently had nothing but respect for how the bid on the big county contract had gone down. The bakery owner who'd been left in the lurch by his supplier bore her no ill-will, as he knew she was overwhelmed at the moment and self-care was very important. The lady shouting red-faced from beneath the ladder of the roofer who'd just dropped a bucket of tar all over the sidewalk urged that he not feel too bad about this, as it happened to everybody.
Most faces were smiling; all shone with inner peace.
And who could blame them, really. Quiet in his mind at last, Sam felt relaxed in his body as he hadn't since…practically ever, really. The weather had cooled off, but the sun was still strong for winter and it felt so good on that spot between his shoulders. He knew that something heavyweight supernatural was going on in this town and that, for a host of reasons—a literal host crammed into some background layer of reality, for one—they had to stop it. But maybe they could, like. Siphon some off for spa days. God knew they could use some of those, the way they lived.
Well. Not God. Well, no, God knew, but—
Anyway.
A merrily flapping windsock pulled Sam's attention back to the outside world. It was the one hanging over the door of the Christian shop. A stiff breeze funneled in through the yellow nylon halo of Jesus Christ and inflated His outstretched arms and white-robed body down to His toes, the force of the wind causing Him to swing from His pole until he was flying horizontally over the sidewalk, á là Superman crucified. Sam stared up at Him. His silk-screened visage gazed benignly back.
Faithful Spirit Christian Supply Store, read the lettering on the window.
Sam narrowed his eyes at the words.
It was probably coincidence. "Faithful Spirit" was a pretty general epithet, and anyway, there were only four archangels to choose from, so odds were it meant nothing however you sliced it. Besides, he was dead. Had been for going on eight years. Had to be coincidence.
The door tinkled with little gold bells when Sam went in.
The place seemed normal enough, shelves lined with inspirational plaques, books, icons. The clerk watching the Worship Network on the flatscreen mounted on the wall opposite the counter murmured some kind of greeting and paid Sam no further mind.
His phone vibrated with a text from Dean. dude where r u need 2 meet. Sam replied and, as he slid his phone back into his pocket, his gaze fell on a table set up before the front window.
It was a display of paperbacks, their covers all blazoned across the top with The Clarke Kids Adventures. These eponymous kids appeared to be a well-scrubbed blonde in her mid- to late teens and her similarly-aged blond brother, who were featured on the covers wearing a selection of wholesome, freshly laundered costumes, at times gazing fearfully off into dark corners teeming with reptilian-Satanic threats, at others cowering behind a blond, broad-shouldered, bespectacled man in a well pressed Indiana Jones get-up. Sam picked up The Clarke Kids Adventures #7: In the Mouth of the Snake to read the blurb on the back.
Life as the children of a famous anthropologist is exciting—but it isn't always easy. Twins Jason and Lily Clarke get to travel to remote corners of the world—but there aren't always bathrooms, and all they have is each other. They get to go on amazing adventures—but these adventures can be dangerous too. Sometimes, maybe to more than just their worldly lives…. A missing missionary, a bottomless pit, and armed locals who worship something at the bottom of it—Lily and Jason and their dad will need all the strength of their faith IN THE MOUTH OF THE SNAKE.
Beneath the blurb was a picture of the author, one Sherry Perrotti. LOCAL AUTHOR! enthused an 8.5 x 11" sign taped to the edge of the table.
Sam turned the thing back to the front cover. It was a lurid mishmash of traditionally drawn characters over digitally drawn background elements, heavy on blacks, mists, and absinthe green. It reminded Sam disconcertingly of the covers of the Supernatural books. He put it back.
The bells over the door sounded, more of a jangle than a tinkle. Dean's cheeks were pink from the wind, quite charmingly, and he had a hard, satisfied glitter in his eyes. "I think I found who's doing this," he said, a little out of breath and keeping his voice low for the clerk.
Sam matched his volume. "That's great! Who is it? Where are they?"
"Who I don't know about, but where I got. I followed her back to her home."
Sam frowned. "That's a little stalkerish, Dean."
"Dude, we are professional stalkers."
"Oh, yeah, right."
"Anyway. I followed her to this—"
"Wait a minute, if you don't even know who she is, how do you know she's responsible for what's going on here?"
"Because you know that blissed-out expression everyone around here's walking around with, including us? She doesn't have it. This woman looked like she was—get this—falling completely the heck apart. Suspicious, right?"
Sam considered. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if weighing the argument through his person. "Not necessarily."
"What do you mean, 'not necessarily'?"
"I just mean we don't need to get overly judgmental, especially without knowing anything about her lived experience."
"Are you kidding me right now?"
"Well, no. It's hard to judge how abnormal her affect was just on your say-so, and anyway, if she's as bad off as you say, she probably needs our compassion— Oh."
Dean shoved his phone in Sam's face. The screen showed a slightly grainy picture of a woman: dark hair, strong jawline, baggy maroon sweater, a prominent pendant necklace of gold angel wings. Her face was half hidden behind hangover sunglasses, but he could see what Dean meant. She looked terrible. Her skin had a gray cast, her face a hollowed-out look, and she was hastening away from the camera like someone hunted.
"Yeah." Sam picked up The Clarke Kids Adventures #7 and flipped it to show Dean the picture on the back: of a woman with a strong jawline, dark hair, and an angel wings pendant over a maroon sweater. "It's suspicious."
They elected to walk to Sherry's house. Ordinarily they would have driven, but after brief discussion they agreed that a walk and exposure to natural light would be beneficial to their physical and mental health.
As they walked, Sam thought. He thought about how much lighter he felt not being curled up around his own issues like a lover. He thought about how good it felt to be able to talk things out without it devolving into accusations and miscommunication, and how self-actualized he felt being able to have challenging conversations with Dean and arrive at a place where they both understood each other better as a result. He thought about how his brother was the most important person in his life, but not, like, in a creepy or gross way, because he had a healthy sense of his own self-worth and he could feel their history of obsession and reckless self-sacrifice receding into the background, being drawn inexorably into some banished layer of reality. He thought about how much it sucked.
Dean studied the pavement as he walked beside Sam. Usually they'd have walked in sync, arms brushing, shoulders occasionally knocking. But now they walked with a lot more distance between them. It was healthier that way. There was less opportunity for someone to be confused about them. There was less opportunity for them to be confused about each other.
Which was fine, of course. Sam didn't miss it.
After about twenty minutes of this, Dean spoke. "Hey, Sammy?"
"Yeah, Dean?"
"This version of us where not everything in our lives is dark and gritty. Where all the edges are nicely filed down. Where we're healthier, and more balanced, and not caught up in some kind of addiction cycle with the intensity of our emotions for each other, and probably live longer with a lot more friends."
Sam's heart sank. Not very far, though, as there seemed to be no particularly deep chasms within him for it to fall into. "Yeah."
"I'm not into it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I can't speak for you, but that's not me, and I'm gonna be pissed if anybody tries to make it me. Assuming I can ever figure out a way to be pissed, anyway."
Sam's heart couldn't soar, either.5 But it could flutter, and it did. "That's not me, either," he said quietly.
Dean seemed to brighten. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. And honestly, I'm hurt that after all this time, you could even think that it would be."
"I'm sorry, Sammy. I didn't mean to trivialize your experiences or subjectivity. I was just insecure. Guess those abandonment issues run deep."
"That's okay, Dean. Thanks for being vulnerable with me."
"No problem. Can we smoke this motherfunker and get the heck out of town, now?"
Sherry Perrotti lived in a bungalow. Her neighbors lived in bungalows, too. Harmony, N.C. had a lot of bungalows in it.
"So, we thinking witch, here?" Dean asked as they turned in at her walk. A decorative banner on the porch read Thank you Jesus (no comma) over a background of orange shading down into a yellow semicircle that might have represented either a rising sun or an expanding mushroom cloud. "Church Lady decides to enlist some help doing the heavy lifting portion of God's work?"
"Maybe," said Sam, unconvinced.
"You sound unconvinced. Want to share whatever hunch or theory you've got that's the reason why?"
Sam considered within himself. "Not really. I'd rather sit on it until it's proven true, needlessly bringing events to the point of crisis before we address anything."
"Fair enough," said Dean, and kicked the door in.
As Sam followed his brother in, they heard a short scream from somewhere in the back of the place. Sam put on a burst of speed and was just in time to intercept Sherry Perrotti, slamming the back door she'd been in the act of hauling open shut with his shoulder. Sherry turned to bolt in the opposite direction only to collide with Dean. Her face was still half-hidden by sunglasses, but Sam saw her face crumple beneath them. She whimpered in pants-wetting terror.
Sam raised his hands placatingly. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sherry, we're not here to hurt you!"
"Who says?" said Dean, sounding affronted.
"Who— Who are— You can't be here, it's not possible."
Sam glanced at his brother. "I take it you've heard of us?"
"What? No, I just— This can't be happening, not here. Can it? Oh, no, I didn't make a rule about— Oh, Lord Jesus, help me, please."
"Pull yourself together," Dean snapped. At least, Sam assumed that that was what he had intended to snap. Because no one looked more surprised than Dean when the words that came out of his mouth were, "It's okay, you're okay, take all the time you need."
Sam decided to focus in on specifics—that seemed to be the easiest way to get traction in a conversation under whatever this effect was that had enveloped the town. "What do you mean, you didn't make a rule? Didn't make a rule about what?"
"I— I mean, I didn't make a rule about robbers in particular, but I really thought—"
Dean rolled his eyes. "What do you think we're gonna steal, your Buddy Jesus? We're not here to rob you, good grief."
Sherry Perrotti was backing slowly away into her living room. She really did look a mess: her sweater hung off her, and her dark hair was lank. The sunglasses weren't quite large enough to hide dark bags underneath her eyes. When she wrung her hands before her mouth as if she wanted to pray but kept stopping herself, Sam could see her nails were bitten to the quick.
"Sherry," said Sam, "we're just trying to get to the bottom of what's going on here. You obviously know something, and it looks to me like you want to stop it as much as we do."
Sherry Perrotti came to a stop when her back hit the mantle of her fireplace. Over it hung a poster-sized print of one of the covers of her books: Jason and Lily Clarke clinging to each other as a dripping red dragon menaced them. Beneath that on the mantel itself sat never-lit candles stamped with Bible verses, a pair of resin hands in prayer, and, in the center, a golden statue about a foot high of an angel blowing a trumpet. She looked between Sam and Dean.
"Come on, Sherry." Dean tried to smile his patented predatory smile. It came out kindly and sincere. "Confession is good for the soul. So I've heard, anyway."
Sherry glanced behind herself at the angel statue. Then she turned back to them, biting her lip. "You won't believe me."
"Sherry," said Sam, "after the things we have both heard come out of our own mouths since we hit this town, I promise you we will believe anything."
Sherry looked at that angel again, and her lower lip trembled. Dean took her by the arm and seated her on a pastel floral armchair, where she folded in on herself. "You have to understand," she said. "It's not my fault. It's those…it's those fans."
"I was at this Christian book fair," Sherry began. "The Clarke Kids Adventures had just started really taking off, and it was my first convention. There was going to be a book signing, and panels, and…." She trailed off and sighed. "I was so excited. So naïve," she corrected herself bitterly.
"My first six books didn't do very well, but then after my seventh had been out for a while all of a sudden sales just exploded. The numbers weren't huge-huge, or anything, but inside my community it was really good. My agent kept telling me, 'You see? There is a market for fiction about two loving siblings constantly facing danger to defend their faith while they follow their father around the world as he goes wherever he's needed! The concept just needed to build up some exposure!' It looked like she was right.
"And then. Then that snake Charlotte Lance told me— She said—" Sherry visibly composed herself. "I had just finished a signing. There were so many people there. Hundreds. And they were young people, too! And really diverse! I mean, I don't approve of piercings and unnatural hair colors and everything, but my agent still thought it would be really great press to be able to say that young people from all walks of life were taking an interest in my work.
"That was when Charlotte came up." Sherry picked up her chin. "She made herself look all concerned, and then she said, 'Oh, Sherry, my dear. I'm so sorry. I'm sure you never meant for it to happen, though. I'm sure that the good Lord will forgive you.'
"I couldn't understand. 'Forgive me for what? Sorry for what?'
"'Haven't you heard? Your sales, Sherry! All those Clarke Kids Adventures flying off the shelves—that isn't Christians buying them!' And then she told me to look on this one internet forum."
At this point, Sherry's face crumpled again, and Dean handed her a pastel tissue from a dispenser shaped like a dove.
When Sherry at last found voice to go on again, it was shaking. "People were writing these stories," she managed to get out. "These stories about my characters. They— Oh, it's too disgusting, I can't say it."
"Kinky stuff, huh?" Dean said sympathetically.
"There were hundreds of them. Thousands." Sherry hugged a throw pillow to herself. "All about Lily and her brother. And Lily and her father. And Jason and his father. And Lily and Jason and Dr. Clarke—"
Dean turned to Sam. "Plot twist, emphasis on the twist."
Sam spared him an exasperated look. "Okay, Sherry, I—I can see why that would be, um, distressing, but why didn't you just…not read it?"
She glared at him over the throw pillow. "You don't get it. The Clarke Kids were my world. Mine. These were my babies! Was I supposed to take all this lying down? This—this filth? These people are perverts! Just because Dr. Clarke believes in traditional discipline for his children, they made art of him spanking Jason without any clothes on! They wrote essays about how because Jason and Lily travel around the world without anyone other than each other, they might develop all kinds of feelings! They said the scene where the worshipers of Magog put Lily in a flimsy white shift dress and are going to sacrifice her to their dark idol in the pit was 'great fodder for noncon alternate scenes'!' she wailed. "And the ones where Jason comforted her afterward were even worse!"
"Okay, okay," said Sam. "I get it. But what does it have to do with…."
"…Why we are all living in Prozacville," Dean said. "I was gonna say 'Disney Land,' except that wouldn't even be weird enough because there. Are. No. Kids. Here. The kids are missing, my much-beloved inner rage is missing, and so is a whole lot else. So get to the point."
Sherry swallowed. "After the book fair, I went to a bar. I'm not proud of it," she said defensively, "but I'd just had the worst shock of my life and all I had around me were false friends and poor witnesses like Charlotte Lance. I was upset. I was traumatized."
"More fun when you're not, FYI."
She didn't seem to have heard him. The pillow was in her lap, now, and she pulled at its corners with her fingers. "There was this…this creepy man at the bar beside me. He smelled dreadful. He was wearing a bathrobe. But I was beside myself, and I— I just needed someone to listen, even if it was some old hobo. So I told him. I told him about these disgusting fans and their shipping. I cried my heart out about how it felt to have this world I created, this world I put everything into and loved, perverted in unspeakable ways. And do you know what he said? Do you know what he said?"
"Uh, no."
"He said, 'Lady, you've got no idea.'" Sherry lobbed the throw pillow across the room. It broke a porcelain Bambi.
"I don't remember what I said after that. The bartender called me a cab and I went home, but I couldn't sleep. Not knowing what was out there. I felt like I'd never know peace again. So I got down on my knees, and I prayed.
"I prayed to God to help me," said Sherry, voice wavering but growing louder. "I prayed to Him to see my broken heart and the wickedness of this Earth and to stop it."
"Well, that never ends well," Dean muttered aside to Sam.
Sam ignored him. "Were your prayers answered, Sherry?" Minute nod. "How?"
A tear dropped from beneath her sunglasses. "He sent an angel."
Sam and Dean traded a look laden with profanity and dread. "What angel did he send?"
Sherry didn't answer. She was staring at the mantelpiece; Sam followed the direction of her gaze to where a golden angel raised a golden horn to his lips.
Dean, who'd soaked up more Biblical iconography in the course of trying to avert the Apocalypse than an entire Young Life group even if he didn't like to cop to it, groaned. "You have got to be kidding me."
Faithful Spirit. Bearer of the Horn. Bag of—
"What happened?" Sam asked, resigned.
"He appeared in this great golden light. He had a white robe, and white wings…."
"What'd he say?"
Sherry's face twisted up. "He said, 'Hail, Sherry, full of shit! The Lord ain't been with this rock for ages.'"
Dean was trying to berate Sherry. He was, however, failing. Sam watched surprise, confusion, and frustration mount on his brother's face as every threat and insult conceived in his brain came out of his mouth as sympathetic affirmations instead, and although Sam wasn't capable of hating either Sherry or the supernatural help she'd had at the moment, he could, at least, run through some memories of Broward County as an access point to remembered hatred.
He left off soon, though. Not even whatever was at work in this place could keep a certain cold sickness that came with those memories at bay.
"—So we really understand what you're going through here, Sherry, and how violated you must feel as a creator to suddenly be confronted with kinky incest porn of your wholesome characters, although, y'know, maybe making Daddy Dearest a spanker and having big brother save little sister from Satanist stand-ins while she's wearing a négligée wasn't what you'd call a crackerjack idea, I mean, who hasn't had some naughty thoughts about that scene in Return of the Jedi—"
Sherry burst back into tears.
Dean winced. "—Oh, wow, that came out kinda victim-blamey, sorry, I'll do better—"
"Sherry." Sam cut off Dean's stream of verbal diarrhea; Dean looked relieved. "When we first came in here, you said you made rules. What rules did you make? And what did the angel have to do with them?"
"He said that God had heard my prayers. He that God couldn't really do anything about it directly, but that He'd sent him to help me do something about it." Sherry finally made good use of the tissue Dean had handed her. "He said the same thing you did," she said miserably when the echoes had died. "That—that these disgusting people were just exploiting these weaknesses I'd made where Satan could get in."
Dean looked to his brother. "Where does Satan stand on the kinky stuff, anyway?"
Sam considered, then rocked his hand from side to side in an "eh?" gesture.
"But he said I could fix it!" Sherry swiped the sodden tissue underneath her shades. "Then he took out this book."
Oh, crepe. "What kind of book, Sherry?"
"It was big, and white, and gold, and it had a ribbon—"
"What was in it?" Sam specified.
Sherry looked up at them. "It was blank." They stared at her. "It— He gave me a pen. A big, golden pen. And he said that I could take control, that it was up to me to make sure nothing like those stories ever happened again. All I had to do was think carefully about what elements in my work had allowed these dirty-minded people to think up ways to pervert it, and then I should make a list of rules, rules for what my world should be like so that kind of thing couldn't happen, and I should write them in the book."
Sam sighed and looked at Dean. Dean, after a visible struggle, managed to sound less than sympathetic to Sherry's pain. "So an angel shows up in a glowing cloud to help out with your fanfiction situation and tells you to start making rules for the world, and this doesn't raise any red flags for you?"
"He said they'd be for my world! I thought he meant for my books, my characters! Those are my world!"
"Well, apparently not!"
"Where's the book, Sherry?" Sam said flatly.
She hunched over. "The angel took it with him when I finished writing in it."
"Great," said Dean.
Sam moved until he was looming over Sherry. He watched her flinch, and then he loomed a bit more. "What. Rules."
She swallowed, and her mouth worked for a moment, but no sounds came out.
Dean moved to stand beside Sam. "Lady, you got rid of children. What gives? What kind of 'wholesome' world doesn't have kids in it?"
Sherry's lower lip trembled. "There…there were all these underaged stories…."
Sam looked at her incredulously. "So you solved that by writing minors out of existence?"
"I have met some twisted kids, actually," Dean said. "So, y'know. If you're constructing the ultimate wholesome universe, I'm not going to say you might not have a point with that one."
"I just thought, if characters were at least of age and not, you know, related…."
That stopped Sam in his tracks. Dean, too, by the look of him. "Beg your pardon?"
Sherry twisted the tissue in her fingers. It squelched. "Almost all of the stories were about the Clarkes. About the Clarkes with each other. The fans just went on and on about how Jason and Lily have no one but each other, and how romantic that is, and how incredible it would be to have a bond like that, and…."
"But how do you get around having relatives?" Sam tried to guess how many people lived in Harmony. It wasn't a big place, but they were still looking at a population of a few thousand, and more than that, it was the kind of place populated by people who'd lived there all their lives. "How's that even possible?"
"Not no relatives," said Sherry. She seemed to be pleading with them for understanding. "I just thought—well, if I hadn't made the Clarkes' family bonds the focus so much, if I'd maybe made those more background elements and worked on foregrounding relationships between non-related characters instead…."
"Sherry," said Dean, and even like this Sam could feel the echoes of something very frightening in his voice, "if you are the reason I've been having intrusive thoughts about broadening my social circle while hunting evil in a place with homeowner's insurance and only seeing my brother around the holidays, this is not going to end well for you."
Sam did not take comfort in that frightening edge, because that would've been unhealthy. But if he'd not been overtaken by such a surge of mental and emotional wellbeing, he might have.
"I just wanted everything to be nice!" Sherry crossed her arms. "What is so bad about that? All of the rules that I wrote were to make a better, healthier world. The fanfiction for The Clarke Kids Adventures wasn't just obsessed with sex, it was obsessed with suffering. These people took a series of Christian YA books and changed the whole tone of my world. Sex! Drugs! Abuse! Five hundred and thirty-seven slave AUs!6 How can they romanticize horrible things like that? How can they normalize them like that? This isn't my fault! If those sickos wouldn't celebrate being twisted, we wouldn't be in this mess!"
"Sorry, Sherry, but who's having the bigger impact on the real world, here, the internet forum members with weird hair indulging in some pornographic creativity, or you? Didn't a school librarian ever tell you burning books is bad? Because trust me, adding angel juice to your censorship ain't gonna make it a better idea."
"We met Susan Burney down at the Corner Cafe," Sam said. "What'd she do? Which of your golden rules did she run afoul of to get her life turned upside-down?"
"Oh, please. Everybody knows about Susan and Davy. Their relationship was downright unbalanced."
"So that rule was…?"
Sherry straightened up and crossed her legs. "I said my world wouldn't leave room for harmful gendered tropes. Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I can't be a feminist."
Sam tried to tally up all the things that were missing from Harmony. Children, intense familial bonds, problematic relationships between men and women, problematic topics, anything dark because that might be romanticizing darkness, which would be problematic. So far Sherry's rules seemed designed to preempt problems of any kind. How children fit into that scheme had been explained, however insanely, but there were a couple of glaring absences that Sam still couldn't account for.
Before he could come up with a delicate way to ask the question, Dean plumped for the indelicate one. "So where'd all the Black people go?"
Because Harmony was, as Dean had put it, entirely too monochromatic for its location. Age, emotion, and interpersonal dynamics were not the only parts of life that had been disturbingly flattened out. Every single character they'd interacted with since they passed the welcome sign had been as white as they were.
Sherry suddenly found the carpet fascinating.
"C'mon, Sherry, I've been through a thousand towns like this," Dean said. "I know something about the demographics of the American Southeast. Black people? Latinos? Whoever's running the Golden China beside the Payless? Where are they?"
Sherry re-crossed her legs in the other direction. "It wouldn't have looked very good for Christian morality if my work perpetuated stereotypes against people of color."
"Couldn't you have avoided that with, like…character development?" Sam asked in disbelief.
"Well, I didn't want to have to write any," Sherry snapped.
"Okay, so: no children, no relations having relationships, no people who aren't white." Sam would really have liked to have been able to experience hysteria right now. "I'm not sure I even want to know at this point, but: why no animals?"
"I saw what happened to My Little Pony, thank you."
"Yikes," said Dean.
Sam narrowed his eyes. "Wait a minute. You 'saw what happened to My Little Pony'?"
He caught Dean's eye. They had both stepped back from Sherry once she'd started talking again in order to give her space to tell her truth; now Dean advanced on her again. Sherry shrank back in her seat. Dean reached out and whipped the oversized sunglasses off her face.
"Hey!"
Dean tossed the sunglasses into the fireplace's fake embers and stared at her. "This is Church Lady? Cheeses, how old are you?"
Sam stared, too. He'd been expecting a woman in her thirties or forties, but Sherry Perrotti clearly was not. It was a little hard to tell with the fallout of a weeks-long emotional breakdown on her face, but she couldn't have been older than twenty-five.
Sherry glared at Dean. "Twenty-three. Why? Are you intimidated by my precocity?"
Dean eyed her up and down. Sherry's rulebook didn't have to do anything to clean it up, either; for once in his life, his appraisal was objectification-free. "So 'no animals,' huh? Gotta keep the serpent out of the hen house, if you will? Don't want Satan worming his way in through any cracks shaped like, say, the family dog?" Sherry squirmed. "And you knew to be on the lookout for this particular niche interest because…?"
Sherry assiduously avoided his gaze.
Dean leaned down. "Sherry," he said pleasantly, "if I were to go look under your bed, which I would never do because I respect others in my monster-hunting praxis, would I find a shoe box full of Bad Dragon?"
Sam made an inquiring noise and cocked his head.
"What?" Dean said defensively.
Sherry's face was now so red it was incandescent. "I repented!" she yelped.
Dean straightened up and wiped his hand across his mouth. He let it drop to smack against his leg and looked at Sam. "I can't believe this."
"Yeah."
"No, I mean, I cannot believe this. One chick feels ashamed of liking some kinky stuff back when she was probably a teenager, and now nobody gets to get their freak on anymore? And Heaven helped make it happen? The Apocalypse was bad enough, but this is just unforgivable."
"I don't think the residents' sex lives are exactly the main casualty here, Dean," Sam hissed.
"Well, no, but all the other stuff flows from that. Makes you think."
"Dean."
"Here's how I'm looking at it: our Mystery Angel is obviously doing this to torture Sherry here. While I applaud that, it's also torturing me, not to mention around fifteen hundred other people, which I'm less enthusiastic about. Who knows how he's doing it, but without Helen Lovejoy here, he doesn't have a reason to do it."
"That's…logical, actually."
"I want out of this town, Sam. I am extremely ready to leave."
"Me, too."
"Great. So can we shoot her now?"
Sherry whimpered.
"I dunno, Dean, it might be problematic."
Dean laughed, raising his Colt. "Oh, right."
Sam batted his arm down before Sherry's sharply indrawn breath could become a scream.7 "I meant, maybe we can't, because it might be problematic and perhaps you've forgotten where we are?"
Dean looked down at his gun. He looked very sad.
"All right, Sherry," Sam said. "You're going to tell us what we need to know to put this town back to normal, or I will find a way to kill you. What exactly did the angel say once you wrote down your rules?"
Sherry swallowed. "He said, 'You missed one.' Then he pointed out that I might not want to have any villains that are actually evil, since some fans will inevitably try to whitewash them and then ship them with Jason or Lily. Or Jason and Lily. Um. I think he said, 'Avoid having significant characters who are utterly irredeemable with harmful ethics.' Then the sheriff disappeared."
"Silver lining," said Dean.
"And that was really all." She gazed pleadingly up at Sam. "He told me that God had heard me and that as a fellow creator, He was moved by my prayers. He said that nothing is impossible with God, so I should have faith. Then he took the book and disappeared in a golden light. It was really pretty. There were sparkles," she said wistfully.
Sherry's front screen door thwapped shut behind them. The Thank you Jesus banner fluttered in the wind of its closing.
"It flicking can't be," said Dean.
"Well, apparently it is."
"How?"
"I don't know, but showing up like that? Tricking annoying people into their own poetic punishments? It's him, Dean."
"Look, I'm all for poetic justice, especially for this chick, but, man, this cannot be allowed to continue."
"I don't disagree."
"I mean, this town has issues. Or doesn't have issues, which I guess is the issue, although you'd think making half the population invisible would qualify as an issue. And—" Dean stopped at the end of the walk, jammed his hands too hard into the pockets of his leather jacket, and glanced back at Sherry's front window. "What in the hill was Chuck doing here?"
Sam expelled a breath. "Yeah, I'd like an answer to that, too. But one thing at a time, okay? We can deal with Chuck when we get home. Right now, our problem is Gabriel."
"I did not miss having to say that," Dean muttered.
Sam thought, Me, either, but the words seemed more than a bit inadequate.
"So what's our play here?" Dean asked.
"Why am I the expert?"
"You spent more time with the guy. You know his style, to the tune of, what, a couple hundred reps of me dying?"
"That's remarkably insensitive, Dean."
"I know it was and I sincerely regret it, which is only underscoring our current problem." Dean flung his hands wide in frustration, distress writ large on his face. "Do something, Sam!"
"All right, all right, just—chill. I think I know where to find him. Come on."
Little gold bells tinkled as the Winchesters shouldered their way into Faithful Spirit Christian Supply Store.
"W'cm t' Faiff'l Spirrit," the clerk murmured without taking her eyes off the Worship Network.
Sam strode directly to the register, gripped the clerk by the collar, and yanked her forward over the counter. She squeaked.
"It's lucky for you," said Sam, "that I'm very well adjusted right now."
Her face cycled through an emotional color wheel from fear to bewilderment to disbelief. "Sir?"
Sam stared her in the eye.
Finally the clerk went limp and sighed. She looked at Sam a moment, almost pityingly, and then her form melted into one all too familiar.
"What gave it away?" Gabriel asked.
"Aside from the inflatable savior?" Sam asked.
"Touché."
Dean smacked Sam on the shoulder. Well. Clapped him nonviolently on the shoulder, anyway.8 "See? That's why you're the expert."
Sam glared at him.
Gabriel vanished from Sam's grip and reappeared beside the display of Sherry Perrotti's books. "Well! You boys are looking fine," he said. "Trim, healthy. Been dialing back the alcoholism a tad? While dialing up that plaid, yikes."
Dean looked unamused. Sam appreciated the solidarity in that. "What are you doing here, Gabriel? You're dead."
That finally brought him up short. "I am?"
Sam and Dean exchanged a look.9 "Lucifer killed you," Sam said cautiously.
"Aw, man." Gabriel looked so downcast for a moment that Sam almost—almost—felt bad for him. But then, of course, the emotion vanished, and who knew if it had ever been real in the first place. "Oh, well, always knew that was a possibility when I bet on your horse. You two and collateral damage are like peanut butter and jelly. Movies and popcorn. Bert and Ernie."
"How are you alive now?"
"Scooby and Shaggy. Nixon and wiretapping. S & M."
"Gabriel."
Gabriel spared Sam one of his hard, fake smiles. "I'm from 2010. Back in time, sorry for the earworm, Sam, Kali just heartlessly stabbed me, reminding me why I love her, and I was moved by passion to consider throwing my lot in with you chuckleheads. Only to consider it, mind you. Before committing, I decided to take a little peek into the future to make sure it would be worth it."
Dean's lashes fluttered in that way they sometimes did when he was processing incredulity, outrage, or a particularly potent cocktail of both. "You fast-forwarded to the end of the Apocalypse?"
"Sure. Nice job, fellas. Or anyway, the planet's still here, which is totally worth getting reamed by my big brother. I guess."
"And you came here to mess with a Jesus freak with kinky fans? Actually, no, that one's on-brand."
"'To thine own self be true.'"
Sam, who had been listening to this conversation with narrowed eyes, said, "No."
"With a dramatic streak like yours I'd've taken you for a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the Bard, but okay."
Sam ignored Gabriel. "Think about it, Dean: if Michael or any of that side could've spied on the future while they were trying to get the Apocalyptic dominoes to line up, don't you think they would have? And if none of them could do it with the full power of Heaven to draw on, no way the Littlest Archangel pulls it off solo. You'd have to have help. Help more powerful than all of Heaven combined." He smiled tightly. "You might even say you'd need God on your side."
Dean's expression soured. "These two working together? Well, that's just great. Because Creation didn't have enough problems."
"That's my Father you're talking about." The temperature of Gabriel's voice had plummeted.
"Yeah, and you know what? We've earned the right to talk about him however we want."
"Sherry crossed paths with him," Sam said. "We know he's behind this somehow. You might as well tell us how."
Gabriel considered him for a moment, with that mixture of amusement and appraisal that had always gotten Sam's hackles up. He seemed to decide something. "I was watching Kali grandstand, wondering if I could talk her into pegging, when Dad showed up, all in a mood. He's always been touchy about His writing. Used to dig into that study of His for months and only come out to complain that the muse wasn't cooperating. We'd've tried to get Him to just hire a ghost writer, but they hadn't been created yet. Anyway, no idea where He's been playing Skee-Ball for the last six millennia, but apparently in this corner of the timeline, He's been spending a lot of quality time in bars."
"The more things change," said Dean.
"And who should He meet there but some basic bitch upset about her fans. It's a sensitive subject for Him."
"Apparently," Dean said. If Sam hadn't known better, he'd have said there'd been a flash of hurt on his face.
"Mind you, He didn't lead with that when He dropped in back at the hotel." Gabriel picked up the display copy of The Clarke Kids Adventures #7 and flipped through it briefly. When he put it down again, the Lily on the cover was wearing a négligée and Jason was wearing his sister. "He started off with one of His usual gripes about the demands of genre, autobiography this time, apparently, and then He offered to give me a lift to the future if I'd run an errand for Him while I was there."
"God sicced you on Sherry Perrotti?" Sam asked. For the first time, he actually felt sorry for her.
"Hey, I don't make the rules." Gabriel's face split in a crocodile grin. "Not in this town."
"Yeah, about that." Dean spread his hands. "We're gonna need you to pull the plug."
"Why would I want to do that? You two just got here, the real entertainment's barely started. Anyway, you just told me Luci's about to fingerpaint with me back in my time; why wouldn't I draw this out?"
"Like the song says, man," Dean said, "you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay here."
"And come on," said Sam, "this is your last hurrah? This? Harmony, North Carolina is the note you want to go out on?"
"Archangel, Samster." Gabriel sounded a trifle insulted. "I can visit every town on this rock in the blink of an eye. Harmony isn't the only iron I've got in the fire."
"Great, so go play with some of the others," said Dean.
"Or what? Look, guys, the fact that apparently you got me killed? Not making me a whole lot more interested in taking orders from you. Now—" Gabriel raised his hand, fingers ready to snap.
"It'd just be a pity, is all," Sam said loudly.
Gabriel's hand halted.
"How's that, Sam?" asked Dean, amiable.
"Well, you know: it's the farewell tour of the Trickster of tricksters, and he's not even going to go for the ultimate punishment?"
Gabriel narrowed his eyes.
Dean faced Sam, who knew by the glint in his brother's eye that they were on exactly the same page. "You're right, Sam. That is sad. And he used to be such a craftsman, too."
"I mean, that handsy professor?"
"My personal favorite was the Herpexia commercial."
"How the mighty have fallen."
"All right, all right, I'm listening." Gabriel dropped his hand. "What's your pitch?"
Sam turned to him. "Give her what she asked for."
"I did." Gabriel sounded professionally affronted. "I've been bringing humankind the gold standard in 'hoist on your own petard' since circa 790; you think I can't handle one U-Turn for Christ escapee?"
"Give her exactly what she asked for," Sam said. "No tricks, no twists. She wanted all her deviant fans to go away, right?" He shrugged. "Make it happen."
"She will never sell another book again," said Dean.
"No one will talk about how to read kinky subtext into her novels. No one will talk about them, period."
"And that's going to hit her where it really hurts. This chick's addicted to attention. Cut her off."
Gabriel looked between them, considering. "Sam. Dean. Do you know, I think I'm starting to remember why I grudgingly made common cause with you?" He pursed his lips, tapped his thumbs together. "Sheriff stays gone," he pronounced finally.
"No argument here."
"Sold." Gabriel snapped his fingers.
A missing layer of sound and commotion slammed back into place. Sam spun around, not quite ready to take it at face value. Outside the window, a small child ran past, one red balloon clutched in a chubby fist, giggling.
A second later, its older sibling pelted after, shrieking, "GIVE IT BACK BEFORE I STOMP YOU LIKE DAD'S SPECIAL FRIEND!"
Dean did a quick three-sixty of the Christian supply shop. Gabriel was gone. "Well, found my anger issues. Sammy? How you feeling?"
"Uh." Sam ran a quick check. "Anxious. Kinda depressed."
"Oh, thank fuck," said Dean.
They left Faithful Spirit Christian Supply behind with the clank of a single tin bell. Overhead, unnoticed as they scanned the street to confirm the presence of all segments of society and wrestled quietly with their own psyches, a windsock angel blew forever into a nylon horn.
Sam and Dean picked their way down the sidewalk back toward the car. She was parked down by the Piggly Wiggly, and the shortest route there was a street roughly parallel to Main, but narrower, quieter, and substantially more impoverished. As they walked, they could hear all the sounds of small town America on a Sunday: family laughter, the crack of a baseball, a mid-level domestic dispute, trucks with modified mufflers drag racing back from church. In the yard of a house with mossy clapboard, a border collie copulated energetically with a long-suffering Great Dane while a small knot of sixth graders looked on.
"Do you think he's still out there?" Dean said after a while.
Sam didn't respond immediately. He thought about Gabriel inhabiting the same world he did, flitting around the globe on some kind of cosmic bender that could, conceivably, stretch into eternity before he ever boomeranged back to face the music. Trapping someone else in a mystery spot of their own, maybe. And he couldn't even kill the son of a bitch without unraveling history.
"Guess so," he said finally.
Dean seemed to pick up on Sam's mood, even if Sam couldn't have labeled it himself. He let the topic go.
For about a block, Dean kicked stray twigs off the sidewalk. "You really think those slash fans got Chuck down that much that he would launch a whole vendetta just because one chick thought she had the grossest shippers on the planet? I mean, not that I'm condoning it, but that just really did not seem like the suckiest part of his life."
"I don't see how they could've. Bothered him that much, I mean. After all, he went out with Becky. Although then again, who knows how that ended?"
Dean snickered. "Ended in you getting conked with a waffle iron and tied up, as I remember."
"Glad my sexual assault could be hilarious for you, Dean."
Dean's smile flagged. "You don't mean that."
"I kind of do, but I've also accepted that it's never really going to get addressed."
"Ouch."
"Hey, you asked." They walked in silence for a while, occasionally bumping shoulders. "Honestly, I doubt he was even talking about the Supernatural books," Sam said finally. "It's not like we're the only thing he created, and people have invented a lot worse than some crappy, misspelled fanfiction. Look around. We're in humanity fandom, and it sucks."
Sam could see Dean considering this before he made a small noise of assent.
"So, anyway. In the face of crap like war, and child abuse, and poverty, no, I can't see Chuck getting too worked up about some weird fanfiction."
"Some of those fanfics actually aren't half bad," Dean offered.
"No?"
"Yeah, it's not all formatting problems and clichés. I mean, some of it's that, sure, but there's a lot that's pretty interesting. And even with the stuff that Mrs. Skarzinski would hate—"
The unexpected memory of that long-forgotten teacher surprised a chortle out of Sam.
"—at least they're having fun."
It was Sam's turn to mull his brother's words over.
"How about us?" Sam said after a while. He spoke carefully, testingly. "I mean, I know we're screwed up, and we've seen some stuff that's left its mark, and we're never gonna be normal. But however screwed up it is, don't we deserve to have some fun of our own?"
Dean walked on for one, two, three, four paces. Then he flipped a pine cone onto the tip of his boot and lofted it into someone's bird bath. He grinned. "Yeah, Sammy. We do."
THE END
you pervert
1. Their codependency is very problematic, and it makes them both deeply unhappy. But there's been a lot of character development, and this is definitely the season when they're going to leave these unhealthy behaviors behind for good.↩
2. Fandom really shouldn't romanticize suffering so much. Platonic suffering's important, too, smdh↩
3. Not hard enough to hurt. It was a gentle swat, with nothing abusive in it.↩
4. Society's celebration of codependent relationships and elevation of that over healthy relationships built on self-respect are dangerous sociological phenomena that disproportionately impact women and marginalized people. That's why we have a duty to push back against it in fanworks. It's a form of activism, really.↩
5. Heights are dangerous.↩
6. Of course, this can be a perfectly healthy kink. Just so long as the characters in the source material aren't related by blood and have a healthy, loving, non-codependent relationship.↩
7. This is terrible gun safety.↩
8. More patted him, really. Clapping on the shoulder was a gesture Dean associated with his father's toxic masculinity, which he'd struggled with internalizing for years but now was ready to leave behind.↩
9. They did this a lot. They knew this was probably representative of an unhealthily intense sibling bond that ought under no circumstances to be foregrounded, but they really couldn't help it, as they were at most one person combined.↩