Chapter Text
Perris, Southern California, 1989
Dean is pretty sure at this point that Mr. Varner isn't even trying not to suck, which is contributing to Dean's certainty that fifth grade, in its entirety, sucks ass.
The classroom is colorful and highly decorated. There are posters, a calendar, framed pictures of past classes, and a double-wide chalkboard bordered with wavy construction paper. Cabinets line the right hand side, next to the door, and the rest of the classroom is devoted to cheap desks with creaky chairs. Mr. Varner lectures in a monotone fashion about the French Revolution to the class, all of whom are either drawing absentmindedly on their worksheets or poking each other with pencils and giggling.
Yeah, Dean thinks, this is kinda bull. Waste of time.
Dean sighs from his back row seat in the far corner. He just wants school to be over so he can grab Sammy and go, but Fridays always seem to last longer than other days. He glances at the clock again, wondering if it's stopped. It feels like it's going way too slowly. He taps his left foot and right fingers, involuntarily beating time along to Ace of Spades, which has been stuck in his head all day.
He looks at the clock again, ignoring Mr. Varner's enthusiasm for guillotines. Ugh, c'mon. The clock is still going so slowly. Hurry up, his impatience chafes, bring on the three-day weekend, already.
He starts to count down the minutes left as he taps out the melody in his head, willing time to move faster than it is.
~~~
History might be Sam's favorite part of class.
"Abraham Lincoln."
"Correct, Sam! President Lincoln would go on to... "
Sam smiles briefly to himself, glancing to his left to catch Mark's eye. Mark grins at him and gives a thumbs up.
Yeah, Sam is really liking first grade. In fact, he's almost bummed it's already Friday; long weekends are cool, but he actually likes this school. Everyone's nice to him, and he almost always knows the right answer, and he thinks that Mark might for real be his friend.
There's a soft rattling sound, and it's odd how Sam stills himself and feels afraid; in that split second that he knows something is happening and no one else does, he manages a swift glance around the room at his twenty-three classmates; Mark is laughing at something the teacher has just said, his unibrow crinkling like a caterpillar; Clara, the prettiest girl in the world, is playing with one of her pigtails while she smiles wistfully at the back of Mark's head; and Mrs. Iverson is writing the date of Abraham Lincoln's murder on the board.
There's a huge lurch. The world looks to be falling because everything is shaking really hard, and the kids are screaming and Mrs. Iverson is shouting for them to duck and cover. Sam unfreezes to do as he's told and ducks under his desk while the floor shakes unevenly beneath him. The room moves around them and Mark shouts out, "what's happening," from under his own desk just as Clara starts to cry.
Sam holds tightly onto his desk's legs and wishes that he were with Dean. It'd be okay if he was with him. Right now, he doesn't know if they're gonna be okay.
~~~
Dean senses it coming before it happens.
Some peripheral part of his senses picks up on the feeling of anticipation, of some vague instinct that knows this is the inhale before an exhale. He's still counting and tapping when he suddenly frowns and feels the hair stand up on the back of his neck, sits up straight and looks around the room, feeling tense. The guy on his left is chewing on his pencil while he aims an eraser at another kid. The girl in front of him is writing, "Kayla & Dean," over and over again in cursive on her notebook. Dean doesn't know why, but he knows that something is off, or coming, and he doesn't have time to form a theory before it arrives, but he's already alert and ready when the thrumming rumble begins at his feet and and he's standing before it travels up the walls.
When the first person gasps, he bolts. He hears Mr. Varner's shocked voice call him back, he hears Kayla shout his name, and he hears the guy with the eraser cuss loudly in surprise. He ignores them all. His only thought is for Sam. He sprints for the first grade classroom, rounding a corner. He's unsteady on the trembling ground, and he falls once but rights himself quickly, vaulting over a downed trash bin. He can see thin snapshots of activity through the wide open doors of various classrooms; students are huddled under their desks, some excited and some scared while teachers call to everyone telling them to stay calm.
Dean is not calm. The ground is shaking beneath his running feet, and Sam isn't with him, so Sam isn't safe.
It only takes him seconds more to find the door, and he barely has time to think about being angry that the door isn't open like the other classes before he bursts inside yelling Sam's name.
~~~
The earthquake lasts for about sixteen seconds.
Everyone is talking very loudly after it stills, and Sam is coming warily out from under his desk when Dean bursts through the door, barely even noticed by the other children in the room, much less the teacher who is wrangling two different crying girls.
"Dean," is all he has time to say before he's run to and pulled up into Dean's arms, and he can feel his brother run a hand over his head like he's looking for damage, "It's okay, Dean, I'm okay." Sam hugs Dean around his middle as hard as he can, and feels the way the tension melts from his back.
And it is okay. Even though Mr. Varner gives Dean a discipline notice and makes him write down the earthquake drill directions thirty times for homework, it's okay. Even though Sam and Mark aren't such good friends anymore because Sam punches Mark in the face when he calls Dean a freak for running around during an earthquake, it's okay. Even though Dad gets mad at both brothers when he has to sign their discipline notices, it's okay.
It's okay because Sam has Dean, and Dean has Sam, and it's okay as long as things stay that way.
________________________________
San Diego, Southern California, 2006 - The Present
"Dude, this is kinda creepy."
The dusty hallways would be suffocating if it weren't for all the broken windows letting in warm, night-time air. The old feelings of institution and oppressive homework are rising as Dean leads the way through the first floor of what had once been the Bluecove Elementary School. Now just a dumpy building waiting to be bought and torn down, multiple idiots have been stupid enough to visit the supposedly haunted site and get themselves hurt by whatever spirit was claiming the joint.
"It's not that creepy. You just always hate schools," Sam quips, and Dean can hear the smirk in his voice.
"Yeah, well, at least I'm not unhealthily obsessed with it like you were. You probably looked up inappropriate pictures of Mrs. Iverson when we were kids."
"Mrs. who? And that's just gross, Dean."
The moonlight shines brightly through the long, decrepit windows that line the hall and the brothers are careful to tread lightly, even as they talk. Even the easy hunts can't afford carelessness. Dean leans down to examine a fallen frame with a map of the school.
"You don't remember? First grade I think, fifth for me."
"Oh, yeah. Didn't I punch someone that year?"
"Yeah, Dad was ticked. Can't remember why you did it, though. It's not really in your delicate nature." Dean glances back and is pleased to catch the expected scowl. What he doesn't expect is Sam's response.
"I think he called you a name."
Dean stops and stands up from his crouch, turning to face his brother with a blank face.
"Really?"
Sam shrugs, his face equally blank.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Huh." Dean turns back around, not sure what to say.
They make their way through the first floor, finding nothing, but the sightings have all occurred on the upper floors anyway, so it isn't actually concerning. They've just come to the stairs when Dean pauses.
"Alright," he grumbles, "this is gonna take all night if we keep going at this pace."
Sam nods his agreement before offering, "I'll take floors four and five, you take three and two?"
"Sounds good. Be careful. Got whatcha need?"
"Salt, lighter fluid, matches."
"Alright, check in at," Dean looks at his watch, "11:45."
"Right."
They start up the stairs, Dean stepping off at the second while Sam continues up. When they split, Dean pauses for a sec to watch Sam keep going up the stairs, and he has that brief feeling of undue panic he always gets when his brother leaves his sight. It's a fleeting feeling, and he turns deliberately away from the stairs to begin a sweep of the second floor with his determination and concentration intact.
About twenty minutes pass without event. He's just finished a completely fruitless search of the furthest classroom from the stairwell with not even a cold spot to be found, and he's starting to get frustrated when an incredibly familiar sensation steals upon him, making him tense and freeze, even if just momentarily. He frowns as some peripheral sense of his feels something coming, something he knows he recognizes but can't immediately place, not until he feels and hears the rumbling start.
His eyes widen, and a memory flashes of another school in another time, a time when he'd been apart from his brother and felt the same familiar feeling, when he'd sensed it coming before it came and had bolted to find Sam and make sure he was okay.
"Oh, fuck me," he bites out, spinning to sprint back down the hallway, but he's barely taken a step before the ground shifts wildly with the quake and starts deep cracking noises from walls and support beams straining against the shaking. As the world lurches around him, Dean shouts.
"SAM-" is all he gets out before something large and heavy collides with the top of his head. Some part of the ceiling caves in on him and he sees white, then inky black, then nothing at all.
~~~
Sam finds the bones after about twenty minutes. Piece of cake, honestly.
He'd gone to the top floor first, deciding to work his way down. He'd run into the spirit once on the fourth floor, but a handful of salt had kept it a bay long enough for him to salt the remains stowed in a janitor's closet and drench them in lighter fluid. He's just dropped the lit match onto the pile, and after a subtle whoosh of nonexistent wind sweeps through the room, it's done. Easy, and he thinks to himself that he won't even have to wait for 11:45 to announce the win. He turns to make his way out of the closet, leaving the pile of smoldering bones to burn itself out. He's mid-step in the hall, digging in a pocket for his cell to call Dean, when it hits.
It's odd; he hears a soft rattling sound that made his pulse quicken and his jaw clench, but can't figure out where he recognizes it from. In that split second when he knows something is going down, Sam has time to ratchet up his worry levels, and he's about to panic and just yell a warning to his brother when the rattling increases dramatically, this time accompanied by a massive jerk that almost floors him.
"What the hell," he manages, and he grasps hold of the doorjamb as the entire building convulses underneath his stumbling feet, realizing with incredulity that this is an actual earthquake, are you kidding me?!
"Dean!" he shouts, lurching into the hall, but he's on the opposite side of the building from where the stairwell is. He knows it's kinda stupid to leave the doorjamb, that he should just wait it out, but he remembers now. He remembers how Dean had gone running through the building that time when they were young, how reckless he was, how stupid he could be when he was worried. Sam feels compelled to get to him now.
"DEAN," he starts to run but his shout is cut off as something solid connects with his head. He falls like a stone onto the unsteady floor and lies there, quiet and inactive as he's buried by the fifth floor.
~~~
Dean groans without intending to as he climbs back to consciousness. He starts to stifle the sound automatically, not wanting Sam to hear and worry, then stops worrying about it and groans louder, because holy shit his head hurts.
"Sssam?" What the fuck happened?
Dean shifts, pulling his hands up under him and pushing up, keeping his eyes closed against the stampede in his head. Ow. He gets into a seated position and has to blink several times before his vision joins and focuses. The hallway of the second floor is relatively intact save for a gaping crack from ceiling to floor in the wall a few feet from him. The window at the hall's end was already broken, but its large shards are now shattered, glass sprinkled on the floor and a cool, inappropriately calm breeze flowing inside, verging on chilly.
Dean remembers with a jolt that ramps up the incredible ache in his head. Spirit, school, earthquake, and Sam isn't with him. Dean's sat on the floor, concussed as fuck, thinking, This sucks out loud in surround sound. Where the hell is Sam?
Dean shoves himself onto his feet, pushing aside the half-whole glass light cover that had fallen and shattered over his head when the quake hit, the reason for his throbbing head. He reaches up to make sure he isn't bleeding too freely, and regrets trying to touch pretty immediately. There's no blood on his shoulders or neck, so he decides it can wait. He stumbles once and only once, before booking it toward the stairs. The quiet is suddenly stifling. It's wrong how the building feels so static and hollow, calm and breezy even though his heart is pounding in his ears, the top of his head pulses and feels swollen, and adrenalin spikes, clearing his vision further.
Dean slows when he gets to the stairwell, looking down at the steps so he doesn't kill himself falling down - that won't help Sam.
If he needs help at all... Dean sticks his hand in his jacket, digging impatiently for his cell phone. He's panting, and he can taste the plaster and insulation in the air, seeming almost powdery, making him want to cough or spit.
He's just reached the second floor when the tinny ring against his ear switches to voicemail.
"Crap."
Unbidden, a memory flits swiftly across Dean's thoughts, so fast that he almost manages to push it away, but then it opens in his mind's eye. With a sharp stab of worry, he recalls a night that was long and terrible, when Sam barely made it through after being in the hospital for days and in pain for weeks. One of their last hunts before Sam left for Stanford. Not the best memory at all, especially right now.
________________________
Oakland, New Jersey, 2002
The house is pretty damn old.
It's one of those classic Scooby-Doo kinds of things, complete with cobwebs, ugly carpeting, and too much gold paint. Gaudily decorated, it smacks of the stereotypical rich-people-with-no-taste-and-plenty-of-secrets kind of haunted house. The front doors sit permanently open, the rusty doorknob obviously broken. The entryway widens into two large, open staircases on either side with walls coated in maroon wallpaper that is peeling and flaking off in places. The stairs lead to one great balcony with an ornate and overdone banister that might have been cherrywood or mahogany under its coat of dust. An open doorway at the far end of the balcony has only darkness behind it.
It's quiet in the midnight. Quieter than it should be.
Oh crap. Time to go.
A crash, a yell, "Move, move, move!" and Dean is running around the corner of the banister into the entry way with Sam directly on his heels.
Not fast enough.
This spirit isn't a particularly evil one, just a particularly irritable one. Irritable can also be deadly, but nothing a grown man at twenty-two can't handle, right? This is supposed to be simple enough, a quick-hitting salt and burn, albeit with the aid of his geeky eighteen-year-old brother. Or at least, that's what Dad had said.
Dean feels a wrenching about his waist, and he smashes backwards into the wall, stunned, while Sam gets pushed the other direction, into the banister. The banister breaks when he hits it, dust shooting out in a burst like a firework, and sends Sam flying into the too big chandelier hung over the entryway.
Twenty-five feet above the ground floor.
"Sam!"
Dean sees the chandelier snap from the ceiling and fall with Sam, hears a crash of shattering glass and crumpling metal.
"Sam! SAMMY!"
Dean dodges a flying vase and pumps salt rounds into the dark doorway it came from, not even waiting to hear the wail of the spirit dispersing. He dashes for the stairs, taking them too fast, toppling down the last half. He rolls right up to his feet again and sprints to the ruins of the chandelier smashed on the entryway floor.
"Sammy? Sam-"
Sam lies still, facedown in the center of the entryway among the jagged remains of the antique chandelier, a dangerous pool of shattered glass and curled wrought iron around him.
No, please no, he's fine. He's fine, he's fine, he's fine.
"Dean."
Dean sighs in relief just as he comes to his brother's side. Sam is awake, and able to speak, both very good signs, even if he hasn't yet moved and his voice is barely audible and he's lying on top of dirty glass after falling way too far a distance.
Dean kneels, placing a hand over Sam's wrist and leaning over to try and see his brother's face.
"Hey, I'm right here. Can you move?"
"No." Sam's voice is quiet, flat.
"Alright Sammy, that's okay, lemme just check you out here-" Dean reaches an arm over to feel Sam's right side. He barely presses his fingers before Sam screams.
"AAAUGH!"
"Okay, okay," Dean tries to keep his voice calm, pulling his hands away, "Sam, hey? You still with me? God, sorry..." Dean grits his teeth, unsure of how badly Sam is hurt. He pulls out his cell, considering an ambulance, but only manages to confirm zero bars when Sam whimpers. Oh god...
"Sam? Sammy, tell me what hurts, man. Can you tell me...can you..."
Dean forgets what he was saying when he spots the blood seeping out from under Sam's torso. A lot of blood. Too much blood. Dean steps over and around, nearly laying down to see what's causing it, not wanting to move Sam until he knows.
There. He can see it, one of the chandelier's wrought iron curls has broken off, the curved end under Sam - no, inside of Sam. Sam has to have landed flat on it, and it's pierced through his chest, Dean can only guess how deep.
There was no way Dean can fix this on his own. I can't move him.
"Dean..."
"I know, Sammy, I know, it'll be okay, lemme just-I'll just...wait, no Sam, don't!"
Sam is pulling his hands up to his head, and then doing a pushup, trying to get himself off of the broken iron. Dean wants to stop him, but he doesn't know how to restrain him without hurting him more; Sam's mouth is open wide in a silent scream.
Then he's up and off, just managing to suck in a haggard breath before dropping over to his left side. Dean catches him awkwardly in his arms, pulling him quickly away from the bloodied iron, oh man that thing was huge and curved, three inches deep at least, and laying him down again on his back near the door.
He's bleeding so profusely, the wound open and wide, torn from the curve of the iron. The blood loss is dire, and Sam's gasping, moaning.
Dean pulls him up in his arms to half-drag, half-carry him outside. Sam has always weighed a ton, but somehow Dean can always find the means to carry him.
"Hold on, Sam, hold on." Every step seems to be causing Sam more pain, he sounds like he's choking.
"Aaaah….augh-aaAAAUGHHHHH..."
"Hold on, Sammy, please."
________________________
San Diego, California, 2006 - The Present
"Hold on, Sammy, please," Dean mutters, trying to reign in the dread that crawls up his spine. After searching the second and third floors, calling down the fourth and fifth floors and finding nothing, hearing no response, Dean is beginning to panic, and his head is hammering, trying to distract him. The top two floors in particular are a damn mess of fallen walls and rubble. He doesn't know where to start, and he can't waste time when Sam might be in trouble.
This could be even worse than injury. Dean doesn't know if Sam has found bones yet, and even if he has, he might not have finished the job. An angry spirit creeping around in an unsound building when Sam might be hurt is about as bad as it gets, in Dean's mind. He cusses harshly, frustrated, then again when the obvious strikes him. He cringes, both in pain and embarrassment. Cell phone, you idiot.
He pulls out his cell again, dialing Sam and hoping to hear the ringer tell him which floor Sam is on.
He lets it ring, pulling the phone away from his ear to listen. Nothing. Not the fifth floor, then.
He dashes down the stairs, blinking hard against the jolt to his head with each step, to floor four. He dials, listens. Nothing.
"FUCK," because if he's not answering, his phone is either broken or...no.
Back to the third, second, even the first floor. Nothing at all.
"There's no way! He has to be here somewhere! DAMMIT!"
Dean raced back up the stairs to try the topmost floors again. The fifth is barely even there, most of it having collapsed, which is not helpful at all. On the fourth floor, Dean edges a ways down the damaged hall, just in case. It seems unsteady, half caved in on the far end; he can hear the outside and feel the cold air, see the tops of palm trees. The ceiling has cracked and crumbled, the far end of the hall completely caved almost halfway down the entire length. The drywall and studs are broken and piled, glass covers from lights and plastic from wiring, insulation and plexiglass and smashed tile all distributed unevenly across the narrow, it seemed so much bigger before, space.
Dean pauses just before the the ceiling ends, feeling the breeze and ignoring the chills sliding over him. He dials once more.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail. Son of a bitch.
Dean is just about to head back and down the stairs, ready to search the third floor again, but something makes him stop and redial just one more time: a gut feeling.
He calls again, and this time, with a new feeling in his gut, a clenching, terribly familiar and terrifically intense feeling, he hears it. Faint. At the end of the hall, amidst the rubble.
Grimacing, Dean begins a cautious tread over plaster and boards, careful and torturously slow, a stupid I hate stupid nature and stupid schools and stupid earthquakes and STUPID SCHOOL kind of tread. You better be okay.
He reaches the most crammed area, and he thinks the sound of the ring was coming from just beyond it, right at the edge, so he climbs gingerly atop the pile, the materials shifting slightly and creaking under him. He can see the stars, hear the quiet. He can't see Sam anywhere.
Feeling pretty desperate now, Dean makes the call again, and the ring is close - weird close, so close it's almost as if-
Not as if. Reality. The ringing is coming from under him. It's coming from where Dean stands, on top of the pile of debris. Dean is standing on top of his buried brother.
It takes everything within him not to lose it then and there.