No Light Without Darkness

Chapter 4: Paranoid

May 14th, 9pm
Lazarus, Nebraska

When Sam got to the diner, Dean had chosen seats already and surprisingly enough had left Sam the side of the table that had the better look of the room and its inhabitants. He was leafing through the menu half-heartedly and only gave Sam a nod as he sat down across from his brother.
“I think the waitress is trying to mummify herself and all the customers by the absence of food, water and movement.”
Dean said throwing down the menu to get up.
“Get me a double cheese burger… I gotta go somewhere.”
Sam watched as his older brother made his way through the tables toward the diner’s restrooms. As though she had just waited for Dean’s absence the waitress came up to their table, pen and notepad at the ready.
“What can I get ya, hon?”
Sam was a little irritated by the fact that he had just been called ‘hon’ by a mid-forty lady with a huge sixties-styled fake-blond mass of hair that looked like she had won a life long supply of hairspray and too much make-up even for a woman half her age. He made it quick ordering Dean’s burger – extra onions of course -, two beers and some chicken wings for himself.

It took Dean a while to return and their dinner was coming within moments of him hitting his chair again. The plates landed before their hungry eyes and after the strange waitress had answered Sam’s polite “Thanks” with the standard line every waitress in the US uses to answer every single thanks she gets, meaning a slightly dull “Uhu”, they dug in like the bad-mannered hungry young men they were… at least Sam did.
After his first two big bites of chicken he heard Dean muttering something - He looked up to see his brother picking on his burger. Dean picking on food! That was a sign that the end of the world was near.
Dean had taken off the bun’s top and was fishing off the onions Sam had ordered for him because Dean always ordered extra onions. The muttering turned out to be along the lines of “Why do these fricking cooks always exaggerate on the onions when half of this world’s population doesn’t even like these things too much?”
Sam’s face went white. It was as though everything went into slow motion for a few heartbeats. How could he have been so blind. It was so obvious and he did not see the signs for what they were. First they had left the Impala, Dean’s most valuable possession, then Dean’s cellphone and leather jacket were missing, as was his pendant. The things he would never forget – things that defined his brother in his very existence were all abandoned out of the blue. Looking back he knew that this could not be his brother. The onions were just the tip of the iceberg. Dean had not been holstering a pistol these last two days. Sam hadn’t seen him carrying any weapons at all. He knew that Dean would rather be caught dead then helpless – and he hadn’t answered Sam’s jerk with a bitch… and did not sit on the paranoid control freak seat in the diner. Each and every single one of those moments should have made Sam suspicious. But it hadn’t. At least not enough to make him check.

Sam could feel his hands shaking. He pressed the palms down on the table hard enough for the knuckles to turn white. He didn’t dare look at the man – or creature – sitting across from him, so he found himself staring at the Dean-impostor’s hands. He had to bite down on his cheek to keep himself from screaming as he saw that those hands were bare. There was no leather band strapped around the wrist and no silver ring sitting on his finger. This was not Dean. He had the unbelievably overwhelming urge to empty a clip of consecrated rounds into this thing that dared act his brother but he couldn’t. He mustn’t. First there was a whole diner of innocent people around them and it was no good manners to go shooting around in public, second and foremost he needed to know what had happened to Dean and for that he needed it to live. He thought that maybe this was Dean being possessed but his mind screamed at him that it couldn’t be. The tattoo was intact and if Dean was possessed there was no reason for the demon to get rid of all of his brother’s stuff.
A terrible image of his older brother lying bloodied and possibly dead in a crushed Impala somewhere in bum-fuck-nowhere, New Mexico, was creeping into his mind and he lowered his head a little lower, so the impostor – shapeshifter or whatever it was – couldn’t see his eyes wide as saucers and his jaw set painfully hard.
He wanted to hit his head onto the table for being so stupid… this might just as well be his last seconds of living and he was completely helpless. He didn’t bring a gun or anything, nor holy water or knives. He was practically a civilian here and for the first time it felt oh so wrong.
“Sammy, you sure you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Sam’s head snapped up to see the fake Dean wolf down the now onion-free burger and found himself sweeping a palm over his face in order to gather some posture and fight down the urge of screaming:
“Don’t call me Sammy, you evil son of a bitch!”
Instead he answered something along the line of:
“Yeah, I’m fine. This case just gave me a headache.”

May 15th, 2am
Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Salting and burning the thing was his way of retaliation for being considered a good new taste for the next Happidog petfood series. He emptied a pound of rock-salt and the lighter-fluid over the unmoving mount of black fur and let Sam strike the match as he only had one hand doing his bidding at the moment. The other one was throbbing painfully soaking his flannel shirt’s sleeve with slowly darkening blood inside his well worn leather jacket. The fire got going within seconds.
Dean checked the wound he had gotten cursing once more.
“Son of a bitch, that fricking beast really had it in for me! Didn’t spare a single look for your sorry ass there.”
He couldn’t understand why he had been the one to be knocked around after Sam had angered it with the torch’s beam.
“Well, maybe it liked your cologne?”
“Probably just had good taste, bro.”
He gave Sam a half-hearted grin and Dean rolled his eyes thinking.
“I swear, for a moment there I felt like a virgin on prom night.”
He turned and started walking back to the car so he could bandage the still dripping bite. The fire was still high casting his shadow to fall in a long dark streak over the gravel road.

“Well, it seemed to think that you’d make good puppy chow, Dean.”
Sam was walking right next to Dean, who just growled back at that remark and looked down again watching his steps, not really keen of falling and bumping his head for the third time within a week.
His heart nearly stopped as he saw it… or rather didn’t see what he should have seen. He kept his head low but couldn’t help the stiffening of his shoulders. God no. When had this happened? His eyes flickered to the ground again double checking what he had seen before. To his utter horror there was no mistaking it. His brother – or rather what he had taken to be his brother – did not have a shadow. The fire behind them made Dean’s form draw its outline on the gravel road in a stark contrast. But there was no second set of shadows although Sam was walking right next to him. For a moment he felt completely numb. Something had taken his brother, again, and he hadn’t noticed. He was alone in the middle of hundreds of hectares of woods with an unknown demonic threat. He was injured and Sam was either trapped inside his own body or gone. Why did life have to suck just so much at times? He focused on the task at hand: Finding out what happened to Sam. He willed his legs not to stop and his heart not to beat as hard and fast as it did, afraid the thing next to him might hear it.
It were only a few yards to the Impala and Dean tried to keep his hands from shaking as he took the guns and bag offered to him and dumped them into the trunk. He swallowed hard as he had to make sure that whatever it was that gave the things to him didn’t have a single weapon left to attack him with. He threw the lid closed again and his eyes caught the floor once more where Sam’s shadow should have been, trying to decide his next move. He didn’t get far because the fake Sam caught a glimpse of Dean’s eyes and looked down himself inquisitively. For one heartbeat they both looked at the floor. Dean’s shadow was dancing in the rhythm of the flames – alone. Then the thing carrying the younger Winchester’s face looked back up again and it knew that the disguise had failed. “Woops.”

Dean’s hand was already halfway to his gun as he was backhanded with enough force to send him flying five yards down the road – he did that a lot lately. His shoulder hit the ground before the rest of his body did and if he had had time for thinking he might actually have been glad that it was the shoulder attached to the already injured arm because the impact was anything other then pleasant.
He groaned lying there for a second taking inventory of his limbs, making sure he could still feel all the important parts of his body. Then he rolled over to grab his gun from the back of his pants.
“What did you do to my brother?”
He grunted pushing himself onto his knees trying to straighten out his vision. When he could see the other’s face sharp again he wished he had been hit on the head just a little bit harder. It grinned – wider then any anatomically correct average human being could manage. The fact that this was Sam’s face contorted like that made him want to retch. “Nothing I wouldn’t do to you as well, Dean.”

It walked towards Dean slowly obviously enjoying every second of it. Dean raised his gun.
“Stop.”
“Or what?”
The steps didn’t even falter.
“You won’t shoot your own brother, Dean.”
Dean clenched his jaw. His mind was reeling looking for any escape. He didn’t come up with any.
“You are not my brother.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Truth be told, he was not sure about anything anymore but the fact that his life was very likely to end before sunrise. As his attacker stood only two feet away he raised his weapon again. He pulled the trigger hoping with all his life, that it wasn’t Sam possessed, but a shapeshifter or whatever. The bullet hit the impostor in the shoulder, because Dean couldn’t bring himself to aim any closer to vital organs. The thing impersonating Sam looked at its shoulder for a long moment.
“Ouch.”
Dean found himself picked up by his throat before he could react any further. He was choked hard struggling against the hand compressing his airways and the gun fell from his hand.
“That was not nice of you, Dean.”

He dug his nails into the arm around his throat futily. All he wanted was to breathe again, but he soon wished to not have thought that as he was flying through the air once more. He saw his car closing in on a very strange angle and much to fast and could only pull his neck in as much as he could shielding his head with his arms and making his back as round and stiff as possible before he slammed into the Impala with full impact. He heard the cracking of glass and knew that his bruised back had crushed his car’s rear window as he felt pieces of glass cutting into his flesh. He was half hanging on the trunk, half slipped through the broken window and onto the back seat of the car.
The decision was made ere the thought even hit his higher brain functions. He scrambled to get fully inside the car and crawled for the driver’s seat ignoring the searing pain in his left arm and shoulder and the blood he smeared everywhere from the numerous smaller and bigger cuts he sported. It seemed to take him forever and a second to reach his aim and just as he turned the key and the engine roared to life the door was ripped open unceremoniously. His attacker reached inside and grabbed the back of Dean’s neck. The hand clamped down like a bench vice on the delicate bones that were his spine. One wrong movement and his heck would snap like a dry twig. But this time Dean was prepared. He had already reached for the spare gun under the seat before starting the car and now he levelled the pistol at the thing that pretended to be his brother and emptied the clip into his attacker within seconds. The grip loosed at the force of the impact long enough for him to stomp down the accelerator and race away heart beating like crazy.
“Oh god, I think I just killed Sammy.”

May 14th, 10pm
The New Rising Motel
Lazarus, Nebraska

Dinner had gone by painfully slowly and Sam had been close to killing himself by biting off his own tongue. He had watched the impostor of his brother carefully for a long time now and had found so many ways that this thing was just wrong… The whole behaviour was Dean at first glance, but then when he watched a little closer it was just off. He couldn’t put his finger on most of it but it was wrong, very very wrong. His mind was racing at the moment trying to find a way to get out of the diner, get a weapon, pin down that bastard and force his brother’s location and state of being out of it before snuffing it. His only problem was that he had no idea what he was dealing with. If he brought out the silver bullets and this was not a shapeshifter – if he was wrong and his brother was possessed by something – then shooting it wouldn’t kill the thing but it would end Dean’s life for sure.
He needed to be sure. As much as he wanted to kill the thing here and now, he couldn’t lay hands on it for maybe his brother was trapped somewhere inside there. So he had planned, plotting while Dean – or better the thing that wore Dean’s face – had finished up his onion-free burger and ordered himself a desert which had taken so long that Sam was assuming they first had to breed the chicken that had to lay the eggs that were mixed into the pie’s dough.

When they were finally leaving the diner Sam was as calm as he could be in this situation. His supply of adrenaline seemed to have run low by now and he was glad enough for it or he’d probably have shaken like a sky scraper in the middle of an earthquake. He felt like the bunny in front of the snake aware of every move he made out of fear of stirring a predator’s awareness to his presence.
Sam followed the maybe-shapeshifter into their motel room. They didn’t talk, which was one more reason this couldn’t be Dean. Said man would have spent the last hour bitching about the wasted time on a non-existent hunt and probably would have told Sam off for being so quiet and gloomily mooded. At least he didn’t have to wait long until the other man decided to get ready for bed and vanished into the little bathroom.
Sam snapped into action within seconds. He didn’t know how much time he had so he made the fastest preparations of his life. He jumped up as silently as he could manage without slowing himself down and grabbed a pen from the table. He was at Dean’s bed within seconds and heaved up the mattress. It took him about thirty seconds to draw a Devil’s Trap onto the mattress’ backside and flip it down again. Then he dug into his bag and pulled out a gun and a magazine of silver bullets, which he inserted immediately before putting the gun into the back of his pants and covering it with his spacy hoody. Then he grabbed a bottle of holy water and the booklet into which he had written down the most essential exorcisms and shoved them into the kanguroo-bag of said hoody. He was barely done as the door opened again and the fake Dean stepped out again just wearing a pair of dark shorts for sleeping and flopped down onto the devil’s trapped bed.
This was what Sam had been waiting for. He acted like scratching his back but instead grabbed the gun and had it pulled within seconds aiming directly at the would-be-Dean’s heart.

“Who are you and what have you done to my brother?”
He didn’t really think getting an answer to that would be so easy, but he didn’t really care for the banter that was to come either. He needed answers and soon. Maybe every second counted when it came to Dean’s life.
The thing acted stunned. It held up its hand in a gesture of capitulation giving him an irritated look.
“Woah, dude, chill! What’s going on here, Sammy?”
“It’s Sam.”
He kept his gun levelled onto the impostor’s chest and waited with a cold gaze upon it whether it made its way off the Devil’s Trap – which meant he could shoot it.
“What the fuck, bro… take that gun out of my face. Did this fricking waitress put something in your drink?”
Dean’s face frowned at Sam and he had to take one long, calming breath.
“Where is he? Where is Dean?”
“Right here, man. I’m…”
“No, you’re NOT!”
He shouted that last word but he didn’t care. His brother – the only family he had - was in danger and he didn’t care who would hear him shouting, or shooting for that matter. He expected more lies. But instead he saw the worried and defensive frown melt of the other man’s face and be replaced with a sardonic grin.
“Well if you insist…”
“Where is he?”
Sam felt his teeth grinding against each other as he watched this absolutely WRONG look on his brother’s face. It was inhuman, cold and pure evil.

“What is it to you? You didn’t even notice that I’d taken over… what kind of a brother are you?”
That stung deep and Sam found himself swallowing hard.
“Are you possessing my brother?”
“Of course I am. So shooting me wouldn’t do you any good anyway…, Sam.”
He hissed out Sam’s name in a way that he never wanted to hear it pronounced again. He gave the thing his most disgusted face.
“I never planned to… which is why I drew a Devil’s trap onto that mattress.”
The demon looked down to where he was sitting and his face showed shock – good. When the thing’s head snapped up again it looked furious.
“That was check…” Sam said and grabbed the booklet from his pocket. He secured the gun again and opened the right exorcism. “This one will be check mate.”
He started reading: “Crux sancta sit mihi lux / Non draco sit mihi dux /Vade retro satana / Nunquam suade mihi vana…”
He had chosen a short exorcism so the demon didn’t have time to hurt his brother, but he didn’t get to finish it because as soon as he had his eyes on the book and the gun’s safety on he was jumped at. Whatever was pretending to be his brother had not been held by his Devil’s Trap… and it was damn fast. The last shapeshifter he had fought was strong, yes. But that one would not have managed to leap off the bed and over the next in one single jump to knock Sam down within the fraction of a second. He hit the wall hard and fell to the floor. Sam thumbed the safety of his gun away but didn’t get to use it for he caught two nasty fistfulls of demonic bitch-slap and was out cold before he could raise another finger.


May 15th, 2.30am
Jackson Hole, Wyoming


Dean wanted to puke and if Dean felt like puking then the shit had hit the fan real hard. He was speeding down the gravel road as fast as he could without running the Impala into the next tree. He wanted to scream and cry at the same time. Sam was gone and he didn’t know what had happened. He was hurt and alone and in the middle of nowhere. He needed help.
He turned onto a normal road again and dared take his functioning hand off the wheel and hold it steady with his bloodied and bruised left arm aided by his knee in order to fish for his cell. He got it out fast and slapped it open, praying for a connection. He thanked whatever power had granted that small favour and went for the speed-dial.
It took a long time until the line was answered and Bobby sounded anything but happy, well rested or talkative as he picked up the phone and snapped at Dean ere said man could even say his name: “This better be a matter of life and death or I’m going to make goulash out of you… and by Death I mean a capital D.”
Bobby had really hit the mood of this evening perfectly well.
“Bobby? Bobby, I think might just have killed Sam…”
He noticed that he was panting but couldn’t say whether that came from the physical strain he had undergone by then or the sheer hysteria that crept over his mind screaming PANIC at the top of its lungs… He had to concentrate on not hyperventilating.
“Dean?” Bobby sounded worried and he had all right to be. “What the hell are you talking about? What happened?”

Dean swallowed hard and glanced into his rear view mirror like he expected a black-eyed Sam to sit in the car behind him grinning evilly. But all he saw was the busted glass of the window he had illegally used to enter his car just a few minutes ago. He took one deep breath and leapt into his tale.
“We… we are up in Wyoming hunting this Black Dog, but something was wrong, he was – shit, I don’t know what he was! – he was a little off for a couple of days but I didn’t think something was seriously wrong…”
“Dean, you’re rambling! Get to the point!”
“I think he’s possessed. He attacked me and nearly beat all life out of me… and… and I shot him, Bobby. He walked on but-“
He swallowed hard trying to force down the tears welling up in his eyes.
“I shot Sammy’s body, Bobby.”
“Holy crap, boy!”
He heard it in Bobby’s voice that the elder man was highly concerned.
“You are in serious trouble… I’ll get there as fast as I can. When the hell did you leave Nebraska?”
Dean blinked at this random question.
“What? Bobby what are you talking about I haven’t been in Nebraska in months…”
Bobby must have been sleeping already because he was not making sense. Great, one more mind-insufficient in the team – wasn’t Dean himself good enough in that for three lives? He wanted to kill something. Now.
“Then why did your brother call me today talking about picking up the Impala after you guys finished up in Nebraska?”
Dean was stunned speechless. Sam had what? That was impossible. His hopes ran high again but he crushed them like bugs… If he let them come up too far he might actually run the Impala against the next tree on purpose before the day was done. Thankfully Bobby was talking again already.
“And by the way I don’t have your stupid car!”
Dean was drawn between laughing at the insanity of this whole conversation and smashing his head against the wheel.
“What the hell? I know that Bobby, because I’m bloody well sitting in it! What the FUCK is going on?”
I screamed at Bobby, but he didn’t give a flying fuck right then. He felt like he had all right to be erratic.
“I got no idea…”
It seemed like Bobby agreed, because he did not take Dean’s head for it.
“What else did Sammy say?”
“Nothing much he only spoke onto my mailbox – I was out getting more ammo. Tried to call him back but he had his cell switched off by then.”
“His cell? He called you from his cell?”
Dean was feeling the pieces fall into place in the blank spots of his mind remembering Sam’s claim to have had his backpack stolen… like hell he had.
“God DAMN it!”
He knew exactly where Sam was. It was the only explanation… at least the only one that didn’t involve him just having gunned down his own brother with a full clip of consecrated rock iron rounds… He took the risk of jumping to conclusions without blinking here. “Bobby, I gotta go.”
“Where? Dean, what the hell is going on? You have no idea where you are going!”
“Oh, I do, Bobby… Lazarus, Nebraska.”
His foot stomped down on the accelerator pedal mercilessly as he shut the cell without saying goodbye and raced down the dark road.


…tbc…

A/N: I love this chapter… Dean being thrown into the Impala is one of my favorite scenes of this story so far… What do you think? REVIEW, please!
The chapter’s title is the song “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath used in the episode “Phantom Traveler”.
For those who knew that exorcism from somewhere: It’s a real “spoken amulet” that is supposed to repell evil. It’s also the exorcism given to Dean on the phone in “Long-Distance Call”.
I gotta thank Cat, who was breathing down my neck via ICQ every minute that I wrote this, making sure I didn’t abandon it or go uninspired by reading every line within the hour it was written, because she was the only person who could have made me write this diner-scene and lent the one or other line in her great generosity. Thnx, kitty.

P.S.: I will make some promotion for what I like to call this story’s ‘sister-fic’. “Rainbow Men” by my friend Mangacat was written simultanously with this fic so we could always trade paragraphes as motivation and feedback. I love “Rainbow Men”, it’s highly amusing and if anyone wants to have some fun while waiting for the next chap, then feel encouraged to check it out!