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arysteiaFic title: Dead Yet Again
Author name: arysteia
Genre: wincest
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 21, 000
Warnings/Spoilers: Explicit sex. Some violence, but not more than you'd expect from an episode. No spoilers.
Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester are at odds while dealing with a seemingly routine haunted mansion. As usual, nothing is what it seems, and nothing goes according to plan. Before long Sam is experiencing strange dreams of another life. A life where he and Dean had a very different relationship. A life that shattered when Sam Menzies-Hall brutally murdered his lover. Or maybe the truth is not so simple. Is there really such a thing as past lives? Is the notion any crazier than anything else they've had to deal with? Is Sam finally just cracking up? Or is there some other force at work? Who really killed Dean Paterson? And what impact will the revelations have on Sam's relationship with Dean today?
One thing Sam has to give Dean credit for; when he commits to something he stays the course, he doesn't change his mind. There's no awkwardness in the morning, and while he doesn't offer a hand with Sam's morning erection, he doesn't try to play it off either, just mumbles, "Morning sunshine," and staggers to the bathroom. Sam pulls the covers back up and goes back to sleep, the sound of the water lulling him.
– "Dean!"
"Yeah, Sammy." Dean leans towards him.
Sam ducks away, avoiding his kiss and the scissors in his hand.
"Sam?" The look on Dean's face is awful, and if Sam wasn't so freaked out he'd be kicking himself for knocking Dean back the first time he tries to show affection.
"What are you doing?" he asks instead.
"Kissing you good morning?" Dean answers tentatively. "I thought that was allowed now."
"I meant with those!" Sam cries.
Dean looks at the scissors in his hand. "I was checking the first aid kit," he answers, a quizzical look on his face. "We're low on a bunch of stuff. What's got into you?"
"I had another dream. You were there."
"I'm not Dean," Dean says firmly.
"You were there."
"I'm not him, Sam."
"Not him, you. You were there. Holding the goddamn scissors."
Dean slams them down on the dresser, making Sam jump. "It was just a dream, Sam, it doesn't mean anything."
"I think it does," Sam insists. "I think it means..."
"Sam."
"I think it means my memories are converging. Coming into the present."
Dean scoffs. "Would you listen to yourself? Coming into the present? That doesn't mean anything."
"You were there, Dean, that has to mean something."
"It means we live in each other's pockets. We already knew that."
"I want you to go back to Heyward. I want him to regress you."
"What?" Dean's incredulous. "No way."
"We have to know," Sam insists. "I have to know. This is driving me crazy, Dean. Come on. If it's all a crock you'll see right through it. You'll either sleep right through Heyward's droning, or you'll wake up and find yourself at a Ramones concert or something, and at least we'll know."
"I'm not Dean," Dean insists. "I'm not that Dean."
"Dean, please." Sam can hear the note of hysteria creeping into his own voice, but he can't help himself.
"Jesus Christ, Sam," Dean explodes. "Why the hell has this got you so freaked? We've dealt with a million worse things!"
"I know, I know, it's just... I'm not me when I'm thinking about him. Christ, that makes no sense. It's like, at the moment I'm right there, it's me, my thoughts and feelings, I get it all, but I'm him, with all his hopes and dreams and fears, not Sam Winchester at all. I don't feel like I could take you in a fight, I feel..."
"Hey," Dean interrupts, "if anyone should be nervous it's me. I'm the one named after the dead guy."
"You heard what Bobby said about repeating cycles."
"Yeah?"
"It's your turn."
"What? Okay, now I know you're cracked. And that's the best proof right there it's all bogus. I mean, a) it's nonsense, past lives; but b) I'd never hurt you, Sam. Ever. In this life or in any other."
He reaches out to touch Sam's face but Sam flinches away.
"I don't understand why you're so scared. Fuck!"
Dean storms into the bathroom and starts rummaging through their toilet bags, tossing tubs of hair gel and pilfered bottles of shampoo over his shoulder. He grabs the nail scissors and the hair clippers and his straight razor and Sam's Schick, and storms back out into the room, picking up the scissors from the first aid kit and advancing on Sam. Sam flinches away.
"Take them, Sam," he snaps. He's not quite mad enough to throw them, but he gestures violently with them and Sam puts up his hands to block them. "Take them!" he insists. He dives across the bed to pull out the bowie knife from under the pillow. "Take this too!" he shouts. "If I come near you, cut my fucking throat."
"I don't want it. I don't want it!" Sam throws them all on the floor and collapses to his knees. "I don't want them, Dean, I don't."
Dean falls to his own knees in front of him and puts his arms around him. "It's okay. It's okay," he croons. "I'd never hurt you, you know that, you're okay. I'd never hurt you, Dean."
He stiffens at the impossible slip, but Sam moves even faster, shoving him away, hard, and springing to his feet, hand falling to the knife as he rolls away. The look on his face is one Dean never wanted to see. He's angry and confused, yes, but he's also terrified.
*****
They walk into the shop side by side, but further apart than they've ever been. Sam's red eyed and miserable, still shaking, and Dean's wound tighter than wire, every muscle shaking with the urge to get out, to run, to flee. To jump in the Impala and just drive as far and as fast as he can, get away from Sam, and this town, and this stupid case.
Heyward has a smug look on his face, and it makes Dean want to smash it in.
"You grope me while I'm under and I will end you," he grits. "Sam. Sam! Pay attention." Sam nods, but he's positioned himself across the room from Dean, a display case full of china dolls safely between them.
Heyward dispenses with the parlour act this time. "Sit still," he says coldly. "I think we may as well get right to the point. Tell me where you are."
"I'm in your" – stupid shop, Dean was going to say – "I'm in my house."
"Yes? Which house?"
"My house by the lake."
"Go on."
"I'm in the hallway, I'm going up the stairs. They're marble stairs. I'm in a bedroom. I'm in... my bedroom."
Sam flinches.
"What else do you see?"
"A bed. An armchair. A dresser. A mirror."
"Look into the mirror, and tell me what you see."
"I see... myself."
"And?"
"You fucking prick," Dean snaps. "You did this on purpose."
"Well, I think we've heard enough," Heyward says coldly.
"We have not. I'm not Dean." He looks at Sam urgently. "I'm not Dean. And you, Sammy, you were not Sam."
"Dean," Sam says, horrified, "sit down."
"I can't do this," Dean says. He needs air, he needs to get out of this fucking oppressive prison of a store, away from the smell of old dust, and Heyward's gleeful face, and Sam's shocked amazement. He breaks for the door, dodging Sam's outstretched arm. Sam chases him, but he runs out across the street before he can stop him. An SUV almost hits him, horn blaring, driver swearing, but Dean ignores it, disappearing down the street on the other side.
*****
Bobby's horrified when Dean calls him, his shock palpable even over the phone.
"You were Sam?" he asks. "And Sam was Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean huffs. "Typical Sam, assuming he has to be the smart one, and I'm just the help."
"You assumed it too," Bobby says sternly.
"I did not!" Dean insists, though he wonders if maybe he kinda did. "Anyway, I did see it, just for a second there, it's real. Just like Sam said, two halves of the same person."
"You always were unnaturally close," Bobby sighs.
"Bobby."
"I don't mean anything, Dean. But you need to be careful, son."
"Of what? Of Sam?"
"Sam, Dean, whatever. He's gotta be pretty angry if you stabbed him twelve times."
"This is Sam we're talking about, Bobby. My kid brother. He'd never hurt me." Dean knows it for a fact, even if Sam is a whiny bitch who can't return the favour.
"Even so," Bobby says, voice infinitely sad. "Your guard is down around him, it always has been. A blade'll do you a lot more damage than a shotgun full of rock salt."
"Hey," Dean interrupts, heading that conversational gambit off at the pass, "that shrink put the mind whammy on him, that's not the same."
"No, it's not. From what I can tell this is much more complex, and much more powerful. I don't know." Bobby sighs. "Think of it as... like a cross between possession and an angry spirit. Sam and Dean are pissed. At themselves, at each other, at you and Sam. And the way you tell it they're only getting stronger. It started as a dream, developed into recovered memory under hypnosis, and now, what, you're seeing it when you're awake? Past lives or spirits or quick change artists, they're getting stronger and stronger. Something's stirred up here, and it's angry as hell."
"There's nothing in the world angry enough to make me hurt Sam," Dean asserts.
"We're dealing with fate here, Dean," Bobby counters. "If fate works at all it's because everybody thinks that this time, for them, it'll be different."
"Yeah. Well, maybe you're wrong. They're angry, sure, but maybe not at each other. Maybe we've had this all wrong from the start. Maybe Sam didn't kill Dean."
"You're going to play the romance card?"
"Not in this lifetime or any other," Dean snorts. "I'm playing the brother card. I know my brother, and I know myself, and if there's anything to this past life crap at all, that means I know Sam. He really loved Dean. He never would have hurt him."
"He was tried and convicted, Dean. They executed him."
"Yeah," Dean scoffs. "Like that's the first time that's ever gone wrong."
*****
Sam wanders back into the store. Whatever Dean saw, it wasn't a Ramones concert.
"You need to be very careful, Sam," Heyward says seriously. "Very careful."
"I'm fine," Sam mutters.
"Au contraire, my young friend. I'd say you're in very great danger."
Sam looks at him. "That's because you don't know my brother. He'd kill himself before he ever laid a finger on me."
"Loyalty is all well and good, Sam, but..."
"He's my big brother. He's always taken care of me. He's not going to hurt me. There's no spell or curse or past life crap can change that."
"Well, you would know that better that I," Heyward concedes. "I never had a brother, fond or otherwise. But I can tell you, in a situation like this, if you don't acknowledge the past life and deal with it, the pressure will become stronger and stronger, until finally it's not Dean you have to worry about anymore, it's Dean. And he is extremely angry at you. At Sam. Whether your brother realises it or not. We're dealing with fate here. If fate works at all it's because everybody thinks that this time, for them, it'll be different. And I can assure you Sam, it won't."
*****
Dean breezes through the front entrance of the Shady Pines Hospice. It's a gloomy place, with that air of superficial cheer all hospitals have, great vases full of silk flowers, and brightly coloured modern "art".
The nurse on duty jumps to her feet. "Can I help you, sir? Sir?"
"I'm here to see Jack Parker."
"Are you a relative?"
"Yeah, I'm his grandson." Dean doesn't even try to sell the lie.
"I'll have to call..." The nurse looks nervous.
Dean stands there tapping his foot, exuding subtle menace. The nurse looks like she's tempted to call security instead, but they won't get him out of here without a fight.
She looks up from the phone in surprise. "Mr. Parker doesn't have a grandson." Dean tenses. "But he says he'll see you anyway."
"Thanks."
The room she shows him into is nice enough, nicer, certainly, than any of the motel rooms they usually stay in. It has the sterile smell of antiseptic though, and something else Dean recognises from a lifetime spent in too close proximity to rotting corpses.
Jack Parker is in a wheel chair by the window. He turns as Dean walks towards him, and Dean can't help flinching at his gaunt face, bones clearly visible, his leathery skin, the tracheotomy hole and breathing tube in his wrinkled neck.
"Wel-come," Parker wheezes, hand on the microphone button. "What – can I – do – for you?"
"Um, hey." Dean sits in the spare chair, and tries to subtly move it back towards the door. "I, ah." He clears his throat. "I'm here about the Paterson murder. In 1949."
"Ah." The light and life rushes back into Parker's face, and for just a second Dean thinks he can see the young, attractive man he must once have been. "Sam and Dean," Parker sighs, nostalgically. "No one's asked me about them in... it must be fifty years?"
"It's important," Dean says.
Parker shrugs. "I'm not going anywhere." He smiles, a hideous rictus in his emaciated face. "And neither are they."
"You knew them," Dean insists, fighting the urge to shake Parker like the ghoul he is. "You said Sam said it wasn't over."
Parker nods.
"Did he do it? Did he kill Dean?"
Parker collapses in on himself. He's silent for a moment, then – "No."
Dean breathes again.
"But at the time, I honestly believed he did."
Dean gestures for him to go on.
"I didn't like him," Parker says. "I don't know why. Maybe it was his accent or his foreign manners. Maybe I was just jealous." He shrugs. "Writers. We all think we're Shakespeare. He had a following though, even if he hadn't written a word in years. Everyone was waiting for the new play. Me? I wrote gossip for the tabloids."
"Do you know who did kill him?" Dean asks, desperate for an answer.
Parker shrugs. "Talk to the housekeeper."
"What?" It's the last thing Dean was expecting. "Anna?"
"Anna," Parker agrees.
"She's still alive?"
Parker nods. "Last I heard, she opened a store."
Dean's jaw drops and his heart races. It can't be. "An antique store?"
"Yes," Parker agrees. "Antiques. With that creepy son of hers. Sam left them everything."
Fuck!
Dean bolts for the door, colliding with the frame as he goes. His elbow's throbbing but he barely feels it over the pounding of his blood.
"You're welcome," Parker calls after him.
Part V
Author name: arysteia
Genre: wincest
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 21, 000
Warnings/Spoilers: Explicit sex. Some violence, but not more than you'd expect from an episode. No spoilers.
Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester are at odds while dealing with a seemingly routine haunted mansion. As usual, nothing is what it seems, and nothing goes according to plan. Before long Sam is experiencing strange dreams of another life. A life where he and Dean had a very different relationship. A life that shattered when Sam Menzies-Hall brutally murdered his lover. Or maybe the truth is not so simple. Is there really such a thing as past lives? Is the notion any crazier than anything else they've had to deal with? Is Sam finally just cracking up? Or is there some other force at work? Who really killed Dean Paterson? And what impact will the revelations have on Sam's relationship with Dean today?
One thing Sam has to give Dean credit for; when he commits to something he stays the course, he doesn't change his mind. There's no awkwardness in the morning, and while he doesn't offer a hand with Sam's morning erection, he doesn't try to play it off either, just mumbles, "Morning sunshine," and staggers to the bathroom. Sam pulls the covers back up and goes back to sleep, the sound of the water lulling him.
Sam rolled over, the sunshine streaming through the open curtains betraying the lateness of the hour. The bed beside him was empty, and the sheets cold. He lay there for a moment, then sat up, remembering he was meant to be meeting his agent for lunch. He picked up the telephone receiver to call, reached for the dial then froze as he heard Dean's voice, "You shouldn't have called." A man's voice laughed, rich and deep, then the unmistakable tones of Jack Parker responded, "It's a free country, Dean, I fought a war for it and all." He eased the receiver back down as gently as he could, and got out of bed.
Dean was rummaging in the desk in the study when Sam went downstairs, opening and slamming each drawer in turn. He turned in surprise when Sam entered.
"Looking for something?" Sam asked calmly.
"My watch, I can't find it," Dean answered, crossing the room to kiss him. "Sleep well?"
"Too well," Sam answered. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"You needed the rest, you work too hard. Anyway, Marcus rang this morning, he had to cancel lunch. I thought you might as well sleep."
"Was that him just now?" Sam asked carefully.
"What?" Dean started visibly. "No, that was a wrong number."
"Oh." It didn't necessarily mean anything, Sam's better angels insisted.
He trailed Dean as he wandered the house, opening drawers and shifting piles of books and magazines. He finally wound up in the upstairs bathroom, where he yanked open the medicine cabinet and started sorting through the contents, pulling things out and throwing them into the sink.
"I want you to fire Anna," he announced suddenly.
"What?"
"I can't find my cufflinks either, the ones you gave me for Christmas."
"You can't be suggesting Anna..."
"I'm not saying anything about Saint fucking Anna," Dean snapped. "But that creepy son of hers was in our bedroom yesterday, I saw him."
"He's twelve years old," Sam insisted. "Anna's worked for me since he was a baby."
"I want them out of this house, Sam. I can't stand her constantly watching me, always looking so disapproving." Dean stormed past Sam back into the bedroom.
"She's not watching you. Will you be careful with those!"
Dean slammed the scissors he was holding onto the dressing table. His face crumpled. "I just want to be alone with you. I want to spend some time, just the two of us, the way it used to be."
"We will." Sam wrapped his arms around him. "We will. We'll go away somewhere, just the two of us. Just let me clean this up."
He started bundling things haphazardly back into the cabinet while Dean kept searching the dresser drawers. A footstep made him look up suddenly to the reflection of –
– "Dean!"
"Yeah, Sammy." Dean leans towards him.
Sam ducks away, avoiding his kiss and the scissors in his hand.
"Sam?" The look on Dean's face is awful, and if Sam wasn't so freaked out he'd be kicking himself for knocking Dean back the first time he tries to show affection.
"What are you doing?" he asks instead.
"Kissing you good morning?" Dean answers tentatively. "I thought that was allowed now."
"I meant with those!" Sam cries.
Dean looks at the scissors in his hand. "I was checking the first aid kit," he answers, a quizzical look on his face. "We're low on a bunch of stuff. What's got into you?"
"I had another dream. You were there."
"I'm not Dean," Dean says firmly.
"You were there."
"I'm not him, Sam."
"Not him, you. You were there. Holding the goddamn scissors."
Dean slams them down on the dresser, making Sam jump. "It was just a dream, Sam, it doesn't mean anything."
"I think it does," Sam insists. "I think it means..."
"Sam."
"I think it means my memories are converging. Coming into the present."
Dean scoffs. "Would you listen to yourself? Coming into the present? That doesn't mean anything."
"You were there, Dean, that has to mean something."
"It means we live in each other's pockets. We already knew that."
"I want you to go back to Heyward. I want him to regress you."
"What?" Dean's incredulous. "No way."
"We have to know," Sam insists. "I have to know. This is driving me crazy, Dean. Come on. If it's all a crock you'll see right through it. You'll either sleep right through Heyward's droning, or you'll wake up and find yourself at a Ramones concert or something, and at least we'll know."
"I'm not Dean," Dean insists. "I'm not that Dean."
"Dean, please." Sam can hear the note of hysteria creeping into his own voice, but he can't help himself.
"Jesus Christ, Sam," Dean explodes. "Why the hell has this got you so freaked? We've dealt with a million worse things!"
"I know, I know, it's just... I'm not me when I'm thinking about him. Christ, that makes no sense. It's like, at the moment I'm right there, it's me, my thoughts and feelings, I get it all, but I'm him, with all his hopes and dreams and fears, not Sam Winchester at all. I don't feel like I could take you in a fight, I feel..."
"Hey," Dean interrupts, "if anyone should be nervous it's me. I'm the one named after the dead guy."
"You heard what Bobby said about repeating cycles."
"Yeah?"
"It's your turn."
"What? Okay, now I know you're cracked. And that's the best proof right there it's all bogus. I mean, a) it's nonsense, past lives; but b) I'd never hurt you, Sam. Ever. In this life or in any other."
He reaches out to touch Sam's face but Sam flinches away.
"I don't understand why you're so scared. Fuck!"
Dean storms into the bathroom and starts rummaging through their toilet bags, tossing tubs of hair gel and pilfered bottles of shampoo over his shoulder. He grabs the nail scissors and the hair clippers and his straight razor and Sam's Schick, and storms back out into the room, picking up the scissors from the first aid kit and advancing on Sam. Sam flinches away.
"Take them, Sam," he snaps. He's not quite mad enough to throw them, but he gestures violently with them and Sam puts up his hands to block them. "Take them!" he insists. He dives across the bed to pull out the bowie knife from under the pillow. "Take this too!" he shouts. "If I come near you, cut my fucking throat."
"I don't want it. I don't want it!" Sam throws them all on the floor and collapses to his knees. "I don't want them, Dean, I don't."
Dean falls to his own knees in front of him and puts his arms around him. "It's okay. It's okay," he croons. "I'd never hurt you, you know that, you're okay. I'd never hurt you, Dean."
He stiffens at the impossible slip, but Sam moves even faster, shoving him away, hard, and springing to his feet, hand falling to the knife as he rolls away. The look on his face is one Dean never wanted to see. He's angry and confused, yes, but he's also terrified.
*****
They walk into the shop side by side, but further apart than they've ever been. Sam's red eyed and miserable, still shaking, and Dean's wound tighter than wire, every muscle shaking with the urge to get out, to run, to flee. To jump in the Impala and just drive as far and as fast as he can, get away from Sam, and this town, and this stupid case.
Heyward has a smug look on his face, and it makes Dean want to smash it in.
"You grope me while I'm under and I will end you," he grits. "Sam. Sam! Pay attention." Sam nods, but he's positioned himself across the room from Dean, a display case full of china dolls safely between them.
Heyward dispenses with the parlour act this time. "Sit still," he says coldly. "I think we may as well get right to the point. Tell me where you are."
"I'm in your" – stupid shop, Dean was going to say – "I'm in my house."
"Yes? Which house?"
"My house by the lake."
"Go on."
"I'm in the hallway, I'm going up the stairs. They're marble stairs. I'm in a bedroom. I'm in... my bedroom."
Sam flinches.
"What else do you see?"
"A bed. An armchair. A dresser. A mirror."
"Look into the mirror, and tell me what you see."
"I see... myself."
"And?"
"You fucking prick," Dean snaps. "You did this on purpose."
"Well, I think we've heard enough," Heyward says coldly.
"We have not. I'm not Dean." He looks at Sam urgently. "I'm not Dean. And you, Sammy, you were not Sam."
"Dean," Sam says, horrified, "sit down."
"I can't do this," Dean says. He needs air, he needs to get out of this fucking oppressive prison of a store, away from the smell of old dust, and Heyward's gleeful face, and Sam's shocked amazement. He breaks for the door, dodging Sam's outstretched arm. Sam chases him, but he runs out across the street before he can stop him. An SUV almost hits him, horn blaring, driver swearing, but Dean ignores it, disappearing down the street on the other side.
*****
Bobby's horrified when Dean calls him, his shock palpable even over the phone.
"You were Sam?" he asks. "And Sam was Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean huffs. "Typical Sam, assuming he has to be the smart one, and I'm just the help."
"You assumed it too," Bobby says sternly.
"I did not!" Dean insists, though he wonders if maybe he kinda did. "Anyway, I did see it, just for a second there, it's real. Just like Sam said, two halves of the same person."
"You always were unnaturally close," Bobby sighs.
"Bobby."
"I don't mean anything, Dean. But you need to be careful, son."
"Of what? Of Sam?"
"Sam, Dean, whatever. He's gotta be pretty angry if you stabbed him twelve times."
"This is Sam we're talking about, Bobby. My kid brother. He'd never hurt me." Dean knows it for a fact, even if Sam is a whiny bitch who can't return the favour.
"Even so," Bobby says, voice infinitely sad. "Your guard is down around him, it always has been. A blade'll do you a lot more damage than a shotgun full of rock salt."
"Hey," Dean interrupts, heading that conversational gambit off at the pass, "that shrink put the mind whammy on him, that's not the same."
"No, it's not. From what I can tell this is much more complex, and much more powerful. I don't know." Bobby sighs. "Think of it as... like a cross between possession and an angry spirit. Sam and Dean are pissed. At themselves, at each other, at you and Sam. And the way you tell it they're only getting stronger. It started as a dream, developed into recovered memory under hypnosis, and now, what, you're seeing it when you're awake? Past lives or spirits or quick change artists, they're getting stronger and stronger. Something's stirred up here, and it's angry as hell."
"There's nothing in the world angry enough to make me hurt Sam," Dean asserts.
"We're dealing with fate here, Dean," Bobby counters. "If fate works at all it's because everybody thinks that this time, for them, it'll be different."
"Yeah. Well, maybe you're wrong. They're angry, sure, but maybe not at each other. Maybe we've had this all wrong from the start. Maybe Sam didn't kill Dean."
"You're going to play the romance card?"
"Not in this lifetime or any other," Dean snorts. "I'm playing the brother card. I know my brother, and I know myself, and if there's anything to this past life crap at all, that means I know Sam. He really loved Dean. He never would have hurt him."
"He was tried and convicted, Dean. They executed him."
"Yeah," Dean scoffs. "Like that's the first time that's ever gone wrong."
*****
Sam wanders back into the store. Whatever Dean saw, it wasn't a Ramones concert.
"You need to be very careful, Sam," Heyward says seriously. "Very careful."
"I'm fine," Sam mutters.
"Au contraire, my young friend. I'd say you're in very great danger."
Sam looks at him. "That's because you don't know my brother. He'd kill himself before he ever laid a finger on me."
"Loyalty is all well and good, Sam, but..."
"He's my big brother. He's always taken care of me. He's not going to hurt me. There's no spell or curse or past life crap can change that."
"Well, you would know that better that I," Heyward concedes. "I never had a brother, fond or otherwise. But I can tell you, in a situation like this, if you don't acknowledge the past life and deal with it, the pressure will become stronger and stronger, until finally it's not Dean you have to worry about anymore, it's Dean. And he is extremely angry at you. At Sam. Whether your brother realises it or not. We're dealing with fate here. If fate works at all it's because everybody thinks that this time, for them, it'll be different. And I can assure you Sam, it won't."
*****
Dean breezes through the front entrance of the Shady Pines Hospice. It's a gloomy place, with that air of superficial cheer all hospitals have, great vases full of silk flowers, and brightly coloured modern "art".
The nurse on duty jumps to her feet. "Can I help you, sir? Sir?"
"I'm here to see Jack Parker."
"Are you a relative?"
"Yeah, I'm his grandson." Dean doesn't even try to sell the lie.
"I'll have to call..." The nurse looks nervous.
Dean stands there tapping his foot, exuding subtle menace. The nurse looks like she's tempted to call security instead, but they won't get him out of here without a fight.
She looks up from the phone in surprise. "Mr. Parker doesn't have a grandson." Dean tenses. "But he says he'll see you anyway."
"Thanks."
The room she shows him into is nice enough, nicer, certainly, than any of the motel rooms they usually stay in. It has the sterile smell of antiseptic though, and something else Dean recognises from a lifetime spent in too close proximity to rotting corpses.
Jack Parker is in a wheel chair by the window. He turns as Dean walks towards him, and Dean can't help flinching at his gaunt face, bones clearly visible, his leathery skin, the tracheotomy hole and breathing tube in his wrinkled neck.
"Wel-come," Parker wheezes, hand on the microphone button. "What – can I – do – for you?"
"Um, hey." Dean sits in the spare chair, and tries to subtly move it back towards the door. "I, ah." He clears his throat. "I'm here about the Paterson murder. In 1949."
"Ah." The light and life rushes back into Parker's face, and for just a second Dean thinks he can see the young, attractive man he must once have been. "Sam and Dean," Parker sighs, nostalgically. "No one's asked me about them in... it must be fifty years?"
"It's important," Dean says.
Parker shrugs. "I'm not going anywhere." He smiles, a hideous rictus in his emaciated face. "And neither are they."
"You knew them," Dean insists, fighting the urge to shake Parker like the ghoul he is. "You said Sam said it wasn't over."
Parker nods.
"Did he do it? Did he kill Dean?"
Parker collapses in on himself. He's silent for a moment, then – "No."
Dean breathes again.
"But at the time, I honestly believed he did."
Dean gestures for him to go on.
"I didn't like him," Parker says. "I don't know why. Maybe it was his accent or his foreign manners. Maybe I was just jealous." He shrugs. "Writers. We all think we're Shakespeare. He had a following though, even if he hadn't written a word in years. Everyone was waiting for the new play. Me? I wrote gossip for the tabloids."
"Do you know who did kill him?" Dean asks, desperate for an answer.
Parker shrugs. "Talk to the housekeeper."
"What?" It's the last thing Dean was expecting. "Anna?"
"Anna," Parker agrees.
"She's still alive?"
Parker nods. "Last I heard, she opened a store."
Dean's jaw drops and his heart races. It can't be. "An antique store?"
"Yes," Parker agrees. "Antiques. With that creepy son of hers. Sam left them everything."
Fuck!
Dean bolts for the door, colliding with the frame as he goes. His elbow's throbbing but he barely feels it over the pounding of his blood.
"You're welcome," Parker calls after him.
Part V
