Dead Gods: Three
It takes Dean a minute or two to get himself under control when he steps out into the hallway, fighting his urge to go back in and keep an eye on Ben. Dreams about the future and diagnosing health problems at sight – whatever the kid had gotten into after Dean left, it is serious mojo. Dean doesn’t want to take his eyes off him, not for one second, but he doesn’t hunt fairytale monsters just to let the human ones come in afterwards and hurt little kids anyway. Dean squares his shoulders and heads back towards the waiting room. It will only take him a minute to say something to the nurses, then he’ll go back to Ben, make sure he doesn’t develop the ability to teleport or to turn invisible or whatever.
This clinic is like every clinic he’s ever been in: calming pastel walls, bland landscapes, the occasional drug advertisement, a few random pieces of medical equipment cluttering the hallways. There are several closed doors that presumably open into exam rooms, including Ben’s, and an ugly ass poster of the cardio vascular system.
At the corner, Dean turns, expecting to see the hallway the nurse first brought him and Ben down, the one that goes past the front desk, but that’s not what he gets.
Disoriented, confused, Dean stops dead. Takes one cautious step back. Peers down the hallway he had just come down.
The hallway is back the way he came, exactly as he had left it.
The same hallway is also right in front of him, a perfect replica right down to the cart of little plastic pee cups sitting against one wall.
Dean doesn’t waste any more time gawking at the trickery. He turns back the way he came, not bothering to investigate this whole duplicated hallway thing, just focuses on grabbing Ben and getting the hell out of there. But right as he’s reaching for the doorknob of Ben’s exam room, his fingers only millimeters away, the lights flicker once, twice, and then the door into Ben’s exam room just vanishes from the wall.
He stands there, heart pounding, hand still extended, still reaching for the knob that is longer there.
Shit. He’s lost Ben.
At that point, Dean is more than a little panicked, but he gets a firm grip on himself. He’s faced down demons and archangels, handled alternate universes, Purgatory, and even Hell, so he’s not going to panic. He can handle a disappearing door.
He takes a minute to run through the list of things that could pull off this kind of trickery, what had enough power to bend space and Dean’s perception this way.
The list is unpleasantly long.
He runs his hands over the wall where the door should go, wondering if it’s just an illusion, but all he feels is smooth, semi-gloss over plaster. Then he heads back down the hallway, wondering if he’ll find Ben’s door on that one, like maybe it’s a moving door or whatever. He knows it’s a futile hope, but that’s all he’s got. But he turns the corner, finds the same hallway and he goes to the end of that hallway, and he finds the same hallway yet again.
He tells himself that panic is not an option and turns around, goes back he way he came, since going forward isn’t helping, and runs into the same problem: same hallway, no matter how many times he turns the corner, and always no door into Ben’s exam room.
It’s an infinite loop of hallways, the same hallway connecting to itself on both ends, forever and into infinity. It feels like it goes on for hours, just him and the same hallway on endless repeat, like the background of a Scooby Doo cartoon where the Scooby gang runs from old Mr. Jenkins in the swamp monster costume, except snatching off the swamp monster mask isn’t going to stop the bad guy when Dean catches him.
Here, in the real world, swamp monsters wear people faces.
“Sounds like you’re one sick kid. Fever, chills, bloody sputum, and a mass of fluid sitting in your lungs,” the not-doctor says casually, as if he’s not a glowing ball of light crammed into some poor man’s body. He flips the chart over and scans the next page. “I have to say, it’s better than I expected. When you disappeared from Battle Creek, I was quite distressed, though I didn’t become properly worried until I lost your trail in Charlotte. If you hadn’t come in for medical attention, I might have never found you.”
Ben doesn’t say anything. His breath is frozen in his throat, and his blood is rushing in his ears, and where is Dean because there is a thing inside this doctor’s body, and it’s in the room with him. Should he scream? Call out for Dean?
The doctor looks up and gives him a benign smile. “Ah. You’re thinking about screaming or something equally futile, aren’t you? Relax. I’m not here to hurt you, and no one would come, anyway.” He sets the clipboard on the counter and leans against it, arms crossed. He studies Ben. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Ben shakes his head. He had seen some weird stuff in the last few weeks, but nothing like this. “I think I would have remembered something like you.”
“You think so, hmm?” The not-doctor pushes away from the counter. “Well, let’s see what we can do for the pneumonia before you end up in the hospital and draw unwanted attention.”
He reaches for Ben like this is all okay and normal and not at all terrifying, but Ben leans back, out of his reach.
“Don’t touch me.”
The not-doctor sighs in exasperation. “Ben, be reasonable. Your immune system is taking a kicking right now, and if I don’t do something, it will only get worse.”
“Why?” Ben can hear the whiny plea in his voice, and he hates it, hates letting this thing see his desperation, but he needs some answers and no one seems to have any. “What’s wrong with me? I’ve been dreaming about the future and I’m seeing things I shouldn’t be able to see, like vampires and demons and what’s wrong with all those people out in the waiting room-”
“Oh, I have no doubt. The future, debilitating medical conditions, wounded souls. That battered and bloody soul Dean Winchester is dragging around must be painful to look at all the time. And Sam Winchester’s?” He shakes his head. “Well, better you than me.”
Ben’s insides twist in terror. “How do you-“
“How do I know that –“ The doctor reaches back for the clip board and peers at the paperwork. “-Roger Waters is, in fact, Dean Winchester? Very few people walk the earth stinking of hellfire like he does. Only two, in fact, and the other one is his brother.”
Ben has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but he gets the point. Dean and Sam are on this thing’s radar. Crap. What has he done?
The not-Doctor reaches for him again. “Now, be still. Let me take care of the pneumonia.”
Ben ducks his hands again. “No. Not until you tell me what’s wrong with me.”
The not-Doctor sighs in exasperation. “You’ve been using the gift of prophecy. It’s not your natural talent, and so you’ve been using more of your soul to power it. Your body can’t deal with the drain, hence the pneumonia.”
“But where did it come from? Why did I start dreaming about the future in the first place?”
He gives him a stern look over the rim of his glasses. “You won’t remember it, even if I do tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Selective amnesia due to trauma. You know what that is, do you not?”
Ben nods, because yeah, he does. Just like he knows what liver cirrhosis is and what a dead fetus looks like still floating in the amniotic fluid of the mother’s womb. But he also knows he hasn’t experienced any trauma since the car accident that neither involved a car nor was any kind of accident. He doesn’t know what the hell this thing is up to, but Ben’s not going to let it scare him. “I can handle it. Tell me.”
He smirks at him. “Very well. About two months ago, I asked you to-“
The world sort of skips a beat. Ben feels adrift for a moment, and there’s this flash of something, a bright light, the memory of a burn in his chest, and then he blinks, realizing that he has somehow managed to lose track of what the not-doctor was saying.
He blinks, confused and embarrassed that he lost the thread of the conversation just when he was getting answers. “What?”
The not-Doctor shakes his head. “Told you. Now be still.”
This time, the not-doctor is fast. He has a hand on Ben before he can even think to dodge him again, and he can’t move, his muscles frozen, his limbs unresponsive. Warmth washes through him, head to foot, a floating, gentle feeling, all of his pain gone for a split second, all the ache and fevered heat. Billions of bacteria die with one massive, death scream, becoming oceans of microscopic corpses drifting lifeless between his cells in a split second.
The not-doctor lets him go and steps away, eyeing him thoughtfully.
“That should do it,” he says, and something deep in Ben’s chest flutters and shifts, stealing his breath.
“What-“ he starts to say, but then his whole body tightens and his diaphragm contracts, and the breath he sucks in just before the coughing begins almost isn’t enough to keep him conscious.
He doubles over, tears running from the corners of his eyes, helpless as his body spasms and heaves against his will.
“Come here,” the not-doctor says, pulling him down from the table.
Ben slides off helplessly, and he has no choice but to let the not-doctor guide him, stumbling, to the sink. Wave after wave of fluid comes up out of his lungs, dark and gelatinous and bloody. His chest is screaming bloody murder, and his ears pop, and his throat burns. Tears slide down his cheeks. He braces himself over the sink with his arms on each side and just rides it out, while the not-doctor rests his hand on his back, and spasm after spasm rocks his body, forcing the bacterial debris up and out.
The not-doctor’s hand finally drops away, and the coughing stops as if a switch has been thrown.
Ben straightens, breathing hard, and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of the jacket. He half expects the coughing to start again, but nothing happens. In fact, he feels amazing compared to how he felt when he walked into the room.
The not-doctor gives him a smile as he turns on the water, rinsing the sink. It’s almost pleasant but mostly smug, and that sun-surface light inside of him roils with pride. “Feel better?”
“What did you do to me?” He doesn’t know what’s happening or why, but he’s starting to suspect this thing is responsible for it.
“What? Kill that festering colony of bacteria growing in your lungs?” He picks up the clipboard, starts scribbling on Ben’s chart. “Mind you, I can’t do anything about the fever, and you will probably spend the rest of the day coughing up the remains, but you should be more or less well by tomorrow morning.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
The not-doctor goes horribly still, his hand pausing mid-scribble, and his eyes slide towards Ben like he has just noticed him for the first time. His inner light churns and boils and froths, and his mouth curls into a twisted snarl.
Ben cringes away, mouth suddenly gone dry.
“Because, Ben, you’re special.” He spits out ‘special’ like it’s the kind of word Ben would pay money into the swear jar for saying. “You have latent power in you that hasn’t properly surfaced yet and wouldn’t have for a few more years except that I had a crisis on my hands and had no other recourse. I needed your divinity, and none of this would be a problem if you had stayed in Battle Creek. But no, you had to go chasing after Dean Winchester-“
He suddenly slings the clipboard across the counter, knocking over a canister of tongue depressors and a display of brochures about smoking, and sending it over the far end where it ricochets off the wall and lands onto the ground. The lights flicker, and the room seems too hot suddenly, the air heavy and thick. Ben slinks back, away from the doctor, his skin crawling. He thinks about making a run for it, wonders if he can make it to the door, but the not-doctor comes at him, crowding him against the exam table. He peers down at Ben like he’s something disgusting he stepped in and needs to scrape off his shoe.
“I don’t understand why he was so attentive to you. You will never choose him.” The not-doctor grabs Ben’s chin and forces his head back, eyes roving Ben’s face. “A waste of his divinity,” he says in disgust.
Ben swallows around the lump of terror in his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The not-doctor smiles, and it’s awful. “Oh, Ben, you don’t think Dean Winchester is actually your father, do you?”
And that’s when the door opens, and Dean himself comes bursting in like the room is on fire, eyes wide, one hand already in his jacket, going for a weapon.
“Sleep,” the not-doctor says without even looking in Dean’s direction.
Dean drops like a rock.
“No!” Ben cries and starts for him - he can’t lose both Mom and Dean, he can’t – but the not-doctor slaps a hand against his chest and forces him back against the exam table.
“Calm down. He’s fine, and he will stay that way as long as you do not tell him about me or what I did here. Are we clear?”
Ben nods, not about to argue anything at this point, not with Dean unconscious on the floor.
“Be sure about that, Ben.” It looms over him, its light writhing with fury. “Because I can destroy as well as I can heal, and I have enough power to make short work of the Winchesters. It wouldn’t take much – a bit of Bubonic plague, or maybe the Spanish flu, and they will be pieces of meat rotting in the earth.”
“Yeah,” he says quickly, knowing exactly how fast either of those diseases would kill them. “I won’t tell him anything, I promise.”
That awful smile comes back, and the not-Doctor pats Ben kindly on the shoulder. “Good lad.”
He turns, steps over Dean, opens the door.
“Wait!” The words are out of Ben’s mouth before he can think better of it, before he can even think at all, and he keeps talking even as the not-doctor pauses in the doorway, eyes narrowed in a way that makes Ben want to curl in on himself. “The little girl in the waiting room-“
The not-doctor rolls his eyes. “Yes, I know about her. I’ll see to it.” He disappears into the hallway, the door swinging closed behind him, his final words slipping through before the door snicks closed: “It’s not as if I can leave here until I do.”
Dean comes to being shaken violently.
He groans, opens his eyes, finds himself on the cold, hard floor of the clinic exam room, and Ben huddled over him, his hands fisted in the front of his jacket in a white knuckled grip. It’s just the two of them, no doctor thing with the mind whammy, no flickering lights or disappearing doors.
“Ben? Is it gone?”
Ben nods. His breath is coming in shallow little pants, and he has a glazed look in his eyes that makes Dean’s gut twist with fear.
“You okay?” he asks.
Ben shakes his head.
“It will be all right.” Dean folds his hands over Ben’s and tugs them off. “We’re leaving now, okay? Move so I can sit up.”
Ben nods and shuffles back on his knees, giving Dean the space he needs to get upright. Dean stumbles sideways, sluggish and disoriented, like he’s just been woken up from an hour’s worth of sleep after being up for forty-eight. He grabs for the counter and holds on tight until his head stops swimming, then stumbles to the door to check the hallway.
Empty.
He turns to Ben, who is still on his knees, back bowed, hands flat on the floor.
“Ben? You with me?”
Ben looks up, his eyes shining and moist. Dean has become very familiar with what terrified looks like in his line of work, and this is it, Ben hunched up on the floor with that glazed expression, paralyzed with fear and practically unresponsive. He’s seen Ben like this before, back in that warehouse when the demon stabbed Lisa. Dean had slapped him then – there hadn’t been any time to shake him out of it any other way, and he felt like shit about it even now – and he really, really doesn’t want to do it again.
“I thought you wouldn’t-“ Ben begins, voice rasping and raw, then stops, swallows thickly, doesn’t finish the thought. At least he’s responding this time.
“Well, I did.” Dean doesn’t know what Ben thought he wouldn’t do, but he has his suspicions. “So, come on. Let’s go before it decides to come back.”
Ben comes easily to his feet, lets Dean hustle him down the hallway and out the back. It’s still raining, a light shower that that dribbles cold water down the back of Dean’s neck. Half a dozen crows perched on the power lines watch them with beady black eyes as Dean gets Ben in the car. They scatter into the air in surprise when he guns the engine and peels out of the parking lot.
Rage and fear overwhelm any relief that they got out of there in one piece. Dean really wants to go back to the hotel, get Sammy, and hunt down the evil son of a bitch that had Ben trapped in that room, but his instincts are telling him to get Ben away from here as soon as possible, instincts that call back to his childhood when Dean had one job, just one job, and that was to protect Sammy no matter what. Except it isn’t just protect Sammy anymore, it’s protect Ben, because Lisa is in the wind, and Ben is his now.
Dean tries not to be overwhelmed at that thought.
Ben finally, finally gets a breakthrough on Dean one miserably cold Saturday morning while he’s raking leaves in the back yard, though it isn’t the kind of breakthrough he was expecting, and it doesn’t actually do him any good.
Ben feels like crap. His fingers are numb even in his gloves. His back has a crick, and his eyes burn with exhaustion. He would love nothing more than to climb into bed and go back to sleep; Mom wouldn’t even notice since he’s actually raking the leaves of his own free will and not because it’s on his chore list. He’s raking to do something, anything because he can’t seem to do anything else.
The dreams have become nothing but an endless, exhausting cycle of nightmares: the splattered mattress, the bitter cold as he heaves himself into the climbing tubes, the wings, blocking out the stars – and they are on constant rotation, slotted in between newer dreams, the ones that happen the next day and are never dreamt of again. He can’t get any rest anymore and he doesn’t understand anything that is happening, the remembering or the forgetting or the dreams that keep coming true.
“Hey, man. What happened to that sweet ride that I used to see in your driveway sometimes?”
Ben nearly comes out of his skin at the sound of the voice. He whirls, heart pounding, to see the neighbor’s son, Jason, half leaning over the fence, eyes bloodshot, his cheeks pink with cold under, of all things, a leopard print ski cap. The kid’s weird, a total pothead; rumor had it he had gone to college but partied away his scholarship and most of his brain cells and had to move back home. His mom has pretty much forbidden Ben to have anything to do with the guy, ever, and usually that’s not a problem because as far as Ben can tell, all he does is sit up in his room all day, listening to Phish and smoking pot, and Ben’s not interested on either account.
But now he’s here, asking about a sweet ride, and Ben’s pretty sure he isn’t asking about his mom’s CRV.
“What sweet ride?”
“That hot black muscle car I used to see here sometimes.” Jason glances towards the garage like he might see it there. “Used to hear it coming from three blocks away.”
Ben almost can’t breathe, and his blood is rushing in his ears. “You mean the Impala?”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ beautiful car, man. Your dad sell it or something?”
“My dad?” Ben’s heartbeat kicks up a notch. “You mean Dean?”
Jason nods slowly, like he’s working really hard on remembering. “Yeah, him.”
“You remember Dean?” He sounds like an idiot, he knows that, but even with the proof he had found on the internet, even with the pictures still pinned to the cork board, Ben is starting to question whether Dean was ever real.
The kid just grins. “Yeah. How could I forget? I thought he was going to tear off my arm that time I touched the car. He leave your mom or something?”
Ben shrugs. “Or something.”
Jason nods knowingly. “Sucks, man. My dad didn’t stick around, either. Too bad your mom didn’t get that car in the divorce.”
And then he’s gone, back between the bushes. Ben stands there a minute, feeling sort of overwhelmed and just a little bit stupid. Other than his mother, he had never bothered asking anyone else if they remembered Dean.
Ben drops the rake and heads straight for the phone.
“Of course I remember Dean, sweetie,” Aunt Sarah says, sounding relieved and happy. In the background, he can hear Lucy demanding the phone. “I’m just so glad you’re ready to talk about him now.”
And then she starts going on about how sometimes grownups just can’t make things work even when they love each other, and blah blah blah. Ben zones her out, realizing that it must have looked like he and Mom had started pretending Dean didn’t exist when they broke up. Of course she wouldn’t have thought they had literally forgotten him; she must have figured they were just too hurt to talk about him when he left.
It takes Ben a while to get to the point of why he called. She wants to talk about why he was ready to talk about Dean, how he felt when he left, and finally, the thing Ben had really called for, had he considered contacting Dean?
“Yeah, but Mom doesn’t have his numbers anymore. And I don’t know how else to find him. You don’t happen to have his number, do you?”
“No, sorry, honey,” she says with a sad sigh. “I don’t.”
And with that, Ben’s hope of finding Dean crashes to nothing. He gets off the phone after he reassures Sarah that he’s okay about five million times and listens to Lucy tell him all about her new favorite Disney movie which is either Braveor Snow White, he isn’t sure which based on her three year old ramblings. His heart is like a lead weight in his chest, and goes back out to the raking because there really isn’t anything else he can do right now.
None of this makes sense. Something erased their memories, but didn’t take the pictures off the corkboard and didn’t bother to erase Aunt Sarah or Jason’s memories. He wants to know what made him and him alone suddenly remember, and he wants to know if it’s something he should be worrying about. He wants to know why he’s dreaming about the future, and how to make it stop, because it is confusing and terrifying and why him?
He wishes someone could give him some answers, wishes that something, anything, would make sense.
That night he dreams about Dean.
Ben’s riding shotgun in the Impala. There is darkness beyond the windshield, and Dean’s grinning at him in the glow of the dash. Robert Plant is singing in the background, and Ben hears himself say, “Why did you make us forget? Wasn’t leaving enough? If you didn’t want us anymore, you could have just said so.”
Dean starts, looks in his direction then looks away again. He must be wounded - there is blood gushing out of a hole in his side and soaking through his clothes – but he isn’t acting wounded and in the dream, Ben doesn’t feel all that worried about it. Dean clears his throat, reaches out, and pops a tape out of the tape deck. Zeppelin falls silent.
“How, um, how did you know about that?” Dean says, and Ben jerks awake, tears sliding down his cheeks, his gut twisting and churning, like he’s been punched hard. The sick feeling of being betrayed is sharp and agonizing, worse than it had been when he had thought Dean was just leaving them.
Dean did this to them.
Dean.
“Ben, baby, what’s wrong?” His mom is standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light.
He realizes he has been sobbing loud and hard like a little kid, not even thinking about how he might wake his mom. He rolls onto his side and puts his back to her, tries to reign in the tears. He doesn’t want to scare her.
“Nothing, mom. It was just a bad dream. I’m okay.”
“No you’re not.” The bed dips as she sits on the edge behind him. Her hand is cool on his forehead and she brushes back his hair, soft and gentle. It’s nice and comforting and he feels like a baby for enjoying it so much. He feels so far away from everyone these days; it’s nice to be touched.
“Am, too,” he mumbles even as his chest hitches with another sob.
“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been distracted lately. You don’t hang out with your friends anymore, and I know you’ve been sleeping badly. Come on, Ben. Tell me what’s going on.”
Ben wants to tell her. So badly he wants to tell her. “Nothing, mom. Seriously. Nothing.”
She makes a skeptical noise. “You don’t have to tell me all of it. Just some of it. Let me help you.”
Ben doesn’t say anything, just lies there and lets her pet his hair, stomach twisting so bad again he thinks he might throw up. There’s nothing he can tell her, nothing to make her stop worrying because she doesn’t remember anything, not the changelings or the salt lines in front of the doors or the demons dragging them out of the house. Everything connected to Dean is just gone from her memory and anything he can tell her now would just make him sound crazy.
Ben has never felt so alone in his life.
“Ben?” she says eventually. “Baby, you can tell me anything. I love you, and there’s nothing that can change that. Please talk to me.”
Ben shuts his eyes, tears sliding from beneath his lashes. She sounds scared and desperate, and he hates that he has made her feel that way.
“Come on, Ben,” she says soft and gentle as she strokes his hair. “Let me help. Whatever it is, we can work it out.”
Ben sighs as something fragile and shaky inside him gives. “Do you know who my dad is?”
He doesn’t know why he asks. Maybe he is hoping she’ll give him a name, some guy he’s never met, who never left them or wiped their memories. He knows she won’t, because he knows who his dad is. He had it figured out a long time ago, back when Dean lived with them. He had overheard Aunt Sarah asking mom about it when they thought he was outside, and he had heard the way his mom didn’t exactly say no, and he had already noticed how much he looked like Dean, anyway. People had assumed Dean was his dad all the time, and sometimes it had seemed like the only person who didn’t know was Dean.
His mom freezes, her hand going still on his hair.
“Is that what this is about?” She sounds almost relieved, but still scared, still anxious.
Ben doesn’t know how to answer that, so he just shrugs.
She’s quiet for a long time. Just when Ben starts to worry about her silence, the bed shimmies as she shifts back to lean against the headboard. “I have to be honest with you, Ben.”
The way she says it makes Ben go cold. He rolls back so he can look at her over his shoulder. He can see the gleam of tears brimming in her eyes in light spilling in from the hallway
“I made some poor choices when I was younger. I did a lot of things I will never tell you about, and I don’t always remember the names of everyone involved.” Her voice wavers, thick with tears. “I don’t know who your father is. I’m so sorry, baby. Please don’t hate me.”
For a split second Ben hears the demon speaking in his mother’s voice: Who knows who your real dad is, kid? Your mom's a slut. And then he sits up and throws his arms around her. He buries his face in the crook of her neck like he used to when he was little, breathing in the familiar scent of the vanilla lotion she has used since forever. He holds her tight, silently willing her not to cry. He is such a douche. Why did he ask her a question he knew she wouldn’t remember the answer to?
“It’s all right, Mom. It’s okay. I don’t need a dad.” Especially not one that erases their memories, but he doesn’t say that out loud.
Her voice sounds steady as she continues, so maybe the tears won’t come. “Maybe not. But I wish I could give you one.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I thought there was this guy once-“
Ben thinks about the dream, and the Dean’s wild eyed look and his complete lack of denial about erasing their memories. He hadn’t just left them, he had removed himself so completely from their lives that they didn’t remember them. Now his mother is almost in tears because she thinks Ben is going to hate her for not being able to name his father, which is stupid, not only because he knows who his dad is, but also because it has always only ever been him and his mom and they had never needed anyone else, and how could he ever hate her?
But he does hate Dean. Suddenly and powerfully and hard.
Ben doesn’t need a dad, never has, never will, and he’ll figure out what’s happening on his own. He’s done with Dean, done missing him and wishing he were here, done hoping he’s going to show up out of nowhere and make all their problems go away.
Or so he thinks right up until he sees the demon sitting across from him at Aunt Sarah’s kitchen table five days later.
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