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Dawn stabbed up red rays from behind the distant Quachita Mountains. Bobby pried one hand off the blistering vinyl steering wheel of his skeletal '92 Camry and flipped down the sun visor. In shotgun, Dean scrunched his closed eyes tighter and grunted, his jaw sharp with tension and his arms clamped around his ribs.
A rustle of clothing from behind Bobby's ear meant Sam was waking up. Despite himself, Bobby felt a pit open in his guts. He checked the back seat in the rear-view mirror, and found Sam looking back at him with half-closed eyes, harmless, maybe deceptively so.
The freeway was empty, except for the odd long-haul trucker and three washed-out hunters who'd just fled the dawn of a new religion. Bobby could spin donuts out here if he felt the need to put his passengers off balance. He let his right hand drift toward the hand-brake as he watched Sam collect himself, but all Sam did was push himself up from a sprawl across the stained plush bench seat to more of a sitting position, long legs draping sideways with his torso twisted around so he could stare dully out the window.
Bobby relaxed, forcing his nerves out on a heavy sigh as he looked back to the road. A movement in the corner of his eye stood all his hackles back up again; Dean had opened his eyes, and now fixed Bobby with the snake-stare that was the last thing so many threats to Sammy ever saw. Crimminy, these boys would be the death of him.
"Mornin'," Bobby announced, breaking the peace of the rumble of pavement and the steady hiss of Dean's controlled breathing. "We get gas in an hour. Either of you up to driving a spell?"
Dean grumbled something incomprehensible and closed his eyes again. Sam was silent, except for a soft scratch-scratch that Bobby suspected was the man slowly dismantling the battered interior with his thumbnail.
Bobby shrugged, sighed again, and cautiously ground his screaming back against his seat. He glanced at the cavity in the console where the Camry's radio had been. The quiet was wearing, but talking, like stopping, would force upon them the cruel truth that while they could run, they could never flee; they could hole up, but they could never hide, not from the almighty. Jonah'd shown as much.
An Arkansas State Trooper appeared on the horizon, conspicuous in a new white Charger parked in a turn-a-round on the freeway median. Sam sighed heavily, gusting sour breath past Bobby's ear. "Miss my car."
"God, don't even," Dean moaned, eyes still shut. He shook his head abruptly. "Pppt. 'God.' What a freakin'. . ." He trailed off, and squinted at Sam. "Whaddya mean, your car?"
"It had air bags," Sam muttered wistfully. "Air conditioning. Got twenty miles a gallon, highway. All the weapons had their own slots in the weapons box—"
Dean straightened himself painfully as they passed the state trooper, and Bobby felt his hand drifting for the handbrake again. "You're talking about your freakin' douchemobile," Dean growled, his eyes widening. "That plastic . . . douchy . . . freaking . . ."
"It had bucket seats," Sam continued. "They adjusted independently. You and I both fit in the front."
Dean's mouth opened and shut in confusion, and Bobby had to stifle a snort.
"And the sound system," Sam moaned, his head thudding against the window. "I shoulda used it. I shoulda got an Ipod, and put Zeppelin and Black Sabbath on it and played it for you; it came with a jack for an auxiliary audio player, factory. I coulda got a tape player to plug in. You coulda played your tapes." Bobby leaned sideways so he could see Sam's face in the rearview mirror, and caught his wide, remorseful eyes gazing childlike at Dean. "I didn't even use my sound-system except for traffic reports. And now it's gone."
"Sorry, dude," Dean replied. "I mean . . . it was black. It had some horsepower. That's, uh, kinda badass. For a midlife-crisis poser car."
"Shoulda got pissed at Castiel," Sam continued. "Shoulda punched him."
"Good luck with that now."
Sam fell silent again, and Dean hunched back down around his ribs. Bobby scrubbed his eyes and shifted in his seat. Dean did not need to be upright holding a steering wheel for the next four hours, and Sam sounded a few degrees off of lucid. Definitely not psychotic, which was a relief, but not quite lucid.
Broadleaf trees began to close in around the freeway. The sun broke from the horizon and sloped up into the sky until Bobby could actually see the road around the visor.
Sam spoke up again, startling a wince from Dean. "I know a way we could do it," he remarked.
Dean opened his eyes at the non sequitur and raised an eyebrow. "Cas?"
"Mhm," Sam grunted. "There's a spell, against possession."
"What, like an exorcism?" Dean asked. Bobby perked up in his seat. Any harebrained scheme was welcome at this point.
"More general," Sam explained. "Way general. We could've used it two years ago, if we didn't mind the collateral." Sam pushed himself upright and caught Bobby's eyes in the mirror, apologizing for something that Bobby was starting to suspect had to do with a wrench, a crowbar, a chalk circle, and a knife. "We get Castiel to scar his vessel. Trick him. Little ritual, little incantation, and he pops out like a champagne cork. Souls go pfffsh." Sam's hand waved around and thudded against the seat. Dean's Adam's apple bobbed; otherwise, he sat rigid after Sam's explanation.
"So you think Castiel needs his vessel to contain the souls?" Bobby asked, before the silence could take too strong a hold.
"Yeah," Sam said.
"Okay, then," Bobby replied. Sam went back to picking at the vinyl with his thumbnail.
Dean coughed, softly and painfully. "What happens to Cas?"
"Loses his vessel," Sam said. "Jimmy should be fine if he's still alive."
"Right," Dean muttered, grim. He looked sidelong at the backseat. "Thanks for, you know . . ."
"Stabbing your best friend in the back?"
" . . . Sure." Dean braced his feet on the floorboards and shoved himself a little higher in his seat. "You were kinda, you know, out of it. And you shouldna drove. But that was still, uh, quick thinking." Something in Dean's voice put Bobby on edge—something cracked and fragile and sharp. "Glad I can count on you to make the right call."
There was a pause, and then, from Sam, a sharp hiss of breath. Sam released his seatbelt and scooted onto the middle of the back bench, wrapping his hand around Dean's headrest. Bobby gritted his teeth and watched the road.
"Dean, he's an angel," Sam began. "He was an angel. And he loves you."
Dean grunted some more, like a stubborn dog digging its claws in the dirt while being dragged by the neck, and Sam leaned closer, wedging himself between the two front seats. "But not—he's not human, he's an angel: they don't love like we do; it means something different. So I had to."
"Sam," said Dean through gritted teeth. "Stop talking. Just stop."
"He loves you, but he'll still hurt you," Sam insisted. "It's what he is. What he knows. They don't see it like us. It's not his fault, but he's not like us."
"And you're some kind of expert, huh?" Dean challenged, twisting in his seat. His voice cracked as his ribs shifted.
Sam grimaced, and retreated to his seat. "Yeah," he whispered. "I'm our expert."
Bobby's grip slackened on the wheel, and Dean shut his eyes hard.
"Shit, Sammy, I'm sorry."
"It's fine," Sam said. "It's gonna be fine."
Dean studied Sam. "You sure?"
Sam snorted. "Aren't you?"
"Very funny," Bobby cut in, keeping his voice dry. "Either of you feel up to a turn at the wheel, speak up. Otherwise we're stopping before I wrap us around a tree."
"I could take a shift," Sam offered.
"Fantastic," Bobby drawled, spotting a Conoco in the distance. "Dean, keep your brother awake."
"Sure thing," Dean said, and Sam grumbled, "I'm fine—I mean—It's not—"
"Glad I can count on you boys."
In the rearview mirror and the corner of his vision, Bobby watched the boys' eyes meet—Sam's a bit wild and Dean's a bit glazed. He let them alone and pulled in to the gas station.
Sam had dreamed, in the backseat of the Camry.
He'd dreamed he was walking through a hilly pine forest, and startled a flock of crows pecking at a ruin of maggots and bone and rancid meat, wrapped in a green chore coat and Sam's favorite pair of jeans. Sam peeled the clothes away and found they were clean and sturdy, so he folded them into a backpack he carried around his shoulders.
He forgot where he was for an instant, and when he remembered, he was in a closed-up house, Bobby's closed-up house, filled with white-shrouded furniture like solemn monks in robes. There was a harsh smell, and the buzz of a hundred blowflies busy at the sunken eyes and grinning lips and crusting gut wound of a shriveling corpse. Its clothes were burnt and torn, but as Sam stripped them from the body, he found they smelled only of smoke and blood; the rot of the corpse had not stained them. He folded them into the backpack to join the first set.
He left the room of shrouds and was in a motel with red flowered wallpaper and white floor-length curtains. His and Dean's duffels lay at the feet of their beds. He approached the empty dresser, opened a drawer, and laid the folded sets of clothes he'd gathered inside. Then he stripped his own body, folded the clothes, and laid that set in beside the rest.
Nude, he shut the drawer, and opened it again.
Three sets of clothes, and only one Sam.