Chapter Text
Description of page 1
"Sam! Sam!" Dean yells, dropping his flannel shirt behind him as he runs. "Sammy!"
Sam looks up from his homework. "What's the matter, Dean?"
"We can bring Mom back!" Dean says, showing Sam a diagram in a book.
"What?!" Sam asks.
Dean draws a transmutation circle with a piece of chalk. "It's not a demon deal or witchcraft or voodoo." He places his hands next to the circle and energy flows around the materials within the circle. "It's alchemy. It's like magical chemistry. Science. Equivalent exchange."
Description of page 2
"With Mom back," Dean says, "we'll be happy again." Sam smiles at the doll Dean made with his alchemy. Dean continues, "You were too young to remember, but we used to be happy. Dad has pictures and everything."
Shots of a garage interior and the Impala. Caption: "When Dad was away on hunts, we had plenty of time to practice. After a couple years of work, we were finally ready."
Blackness. Caption: "The transmutation was a failure."
1993
Dean falls forward, landing with a thud on the chalk circle scrawled on cold concrete. He slams his fist against the ground and grits his teeth. His leg. Somehow he doesn't feel any pain, just an awful sort of pulsing. Too much blood.
He shoves himself up to sitting position, unable to swallow back a groan of nausea. The garage spins around him and he just wants to lie back down - close his eyes - Dean shakes his head clear. He can't. Not until Sammy's safe.
With shaking hands, Dean rips a sleeve from his flannel shirt and twists the fabric into a thick rope. “Sam!” he yells as he scans the garage for his brother, trying to avoid looking at the… thing writhing in the center of the circle.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Tears flood his eyes and a bitter gorge rises in this throat as he knots the improvised tourniquet as tightly as he can around his upper thigh. Across the circle, a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and two ratty tennis shoes lie empty on the floor.
“Sammy?” he calls out into the dark corners behind his dad's Impala, but deep down he already knows. Hopelessness washes over him, as cold as the shock already sinking into his bones.
His little brother is gone.
1999
“Go! Get the hell out of here!” Dean yells to the woman he’s just rescued from the angry spirit of a gas station owner. He kicks over an old can of gasoline, strikes a match on his hook, and throws the lit match down on the old wooden toolbox. Dean backs away as the ghost screams and bursts into flame.
The dead old man stares with pure hatred at Dean and reaches up - Dean holds his shotgun steady, but the ghost isn’t attacking Dean. Instead, he deliberately wraps one burning hand around a rope, setting it afire even as the ghost burns outs and fades away.
Dean realizes a little too late that the whole place is a tinderbox - oil and gasoline spills, dry wood and dead leaves. They’ve gotta get out of here, fast. Dean walks backwards through the burning garage as he tries to follow the path of the rapidly fraying rope. It goes up the wall, across the ceiling, through a pulley, and - son of a bitch.
Dean turns back to the woman, who is waiting for him near the open garage door. Shit shit shit. “Move,” Dean yells, cursing his slow gait as he runs at her. She moves, but too slowly. Hearing an ominous metal squeal from overhead, Dean launches himself at the lady, pushing her clear of the door onto the driveway outside the garage.
The heavy door slams down with an audible crunch on his leg.
“Oh my god,” the woman says, lying dazed on the ground. She holds her head as she rolls over to look up at the door that had narrowly missed her. Then she lowers her gaze to Dean's crushed leg and repeats, "Oh my god!"
Dean sits up and tries to wedge his hand under the door to pull it up enough to free his leg. He looks back at the woman. She's just sitting there on the pavement, mouth agape. He waggles his prosthetic right arm at her. "A hand, please?"
"Oh, um, sure," she says, and helps Dean pull the heavy steel door up a couple more inches. "Are you okay-?" Dean yanks his leg out and winces as his boot just flops around freely. The woman is white as a sheet as she looks down at Dean's foot, but she helps him stand. When he experimentally puts a bit of weight on the crushed joint, she gasps and reaches forward to try to stop him, because-
"Oh, honey," Dean laughs, shaking his head. He pulls his pant leg up above his ankle, exposing a mess of cracked plastic and bent metal. "I ain't gonna say I'm fine, because you don't wanna know how much this thing cost… but you don't have to worry about me." He winks at her.
The woman presses a hand to her heart and breathes a huff of shocked and relieved laughter.
"You okay?" Dean asks the woman as they limp away from the burning garage. She seems to just have some scrapes and bruises, but you can never be sure.
She nods shakily. “That man in there - that man was a ghost?”
“Yup. Anchored to an old toolbox in the garage.” He looks back and watches smoke curl up from the building. “Gone now. We should get out of here before folks come asking questions.”
"My car's right here -" She gestures at a little blue Honda. “But it’s out of commission. Only reason I stopped at this place.”
“Lemme take a look,” he says. He convinces her to pop the hood and immediately winces at the smell that wafts up from the engine. “When was the last time you changed your oil?”
“Oil?” She asks from the driver’s seat. “I, uh… can’t remember.”
Under the hood, Dean lowers his head and closes his eyes in despair. Not even a Honda deserves this level of neglect. “I think I see the problem,” he says. He limps over to the driver’s side and nods at the pile of junk in the backseat. “You got a bottle of the water back there?”
“Maybe...” She starts searching through her car.
Dean uses the distraction to press his palm and hook to the poor, abused engine. Blue sparks flow across the metal as Dean targets the blown head gasket in an alchemical transmutation that pushes the leaked coolant back into the reservoir, then repairs the damaged seals.
The woman pops up by his shoulder just after the sparks die away, waving a half-full bottle of water. “Found some!”
Dean pours the water in the radiator. Won’t help, but won’t hurt either. “Try the ignition.”
She does, and the engine sputters to life. Sounds like it’s on its last legs, but… Dean shrugs and shuts the hood. “Should get you to Andy’s okay.”
“Andy’s?”
Dean pulls a soft-edged, worn business card out of his wallet. “Right down the road in Sioux Falls. Tell ‘em Dean sent ya.”
“Thanks, Dean,” she says, taking the card. She smiles up at him through the open window. “You want a ride?”
He shakes his head. "Nah, it’s my day off. My ride’s right over there anyway." He points a thumb over his shoulder at the beat-up Mercury Cougar on the side of the road.
"You sure?" the woman asks, biting her lip and looking him up and down with open curiosity. "I mean, killing ghosts and fixing cars?" She quirks an eyebrow at him. "That's impressive."
Dean just grins and shrugs. "What can I say? It's the family business.” He drags his bum leg around and heads for his car.
Dean sits at his desk and examines his wrecked prosthesis. The knee joint looks fine, thank god, but the ankle is demolished. He opens his shoebox of random raw materials and paws through it. Plastic bottle caps, paper clips, scraps of fabric, copper bolts, crushed aluminum cans…
He grabs a beer can and a soda cap and sets them on the desk next to the prosthesis. He closes his eyes and grabs his right shoulder with his left hand to create an alchemical circuit within his body. Blue sparks of energy flare up around the leg as he wills the metal and plastic to reform in the correct shapes. The sparks die away, leaving a joint that looks just how Dean remembers it when it was new - slightly different colors is all.
But the real test is in how it moves. Dean presses the foot against the desktop and rocks the leg back and forth. Damn, not nearly as smooth and silent as it had been before. He frowns down at the joint. Maybe Bobby was right about those engineering classes at the community college - if he just knew a little more about material properties and tolerances, maybe he’d be able to -
“Dean.” Castiel’s sudden appearance interrupts his train of thought. Oddly, the angel’s not wearing a trench coat and suit for once - just a t-shirt and pajama pants.
Dean blinks up at him. “Hey, Cas.” He pushes his chair back and starts donning his leg. “You catch Jimmy by surprise this time?”
Cas stares blankly at Dean for a moment before looking down at his vessel’s body. “Oh, you mean my state of relatively informal dress.” He nods. “Yes, Jimmy is somewhat embarrassed.”
“Why are you here? It’s been months. I thought I’d finally grown out of my imaginary friend.”
“Dean, I have told you before, I am not imaginary.”
“Fine,” Dean says, grinning. “Let me call Bobby up here -”
“Dean, we don’t have time for this,” Cas says urgently. “Events are happening very quickly. There are things that I couldn’t tell you, that I still can’t tell you - but I feel I must warn you. Your father is in grave danger.”
“Dad?” He hasn’t seen his dad in six years. “I don’t even know where Dad is. He just calls Bobby every once in a while to let us know he’s still alive.”
Castiel breaks eye contact, looking almost guilty, although Dean can't imagine why. “You'll learn all of everything soon enough. However - whatever you learn, you can't interfere. You must stay here, in Sioux Falls.”
“I don’t have any plans to leave,” Dean says honestly. He has a decent gig at the auto shop in town, Bobby doesn’t charge much rent, and he hunts on the weekends. Seems like a pretty good deal to him.
“Dean, promise me,” Cas says, his gravelly voice strained. “If you try to save your father, you will both die. Promise me you will stay here.”
Dean rolls his eyes. His old social worker had told him that trauma takes weird forms sometimes, but hallucinating a melodramatic angel really takes the cake. “Okay, Cas. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
“Good. Jimmy does not want to leave Claire alone. We must go.”
Cas has mentioned this Claire person a couple times, and Dean burns with curiosity about her. But he also figures it’s none of his business if his imaginary friend's imaginary alter-ego is imaginary shacking up with some imaginary girl. So he just says, “Nice seeing you, Cas.” But even as he speaks the words, Cas is gone.
“‘Bout time you got down here,” Bobby calls over to him when he hears Dean clambering down the stairs. “You ain’t getting out of dish duty just ‘cause it’s late.”
“Get off my case, Bobby. Just had to straighten out my leg first.”
“Likely excuse,” Bobby grumbles from his seat in the kitchen.
That’s when Dean hears the car coming towards the house. And something about it, the rumble of that engine...
Bobby stands and pulls aside a curtain. “Well I’ll be damned.”
Curious, Dean follows him to look out the window at headlights coming up through the entrance to the junkyard. And behind those headlights in the darkness, a sleek, black shape... A 1967 Chevrolet Impala.
“It’s Dad.” Dean is in shock. Just like Cas had said- Dean chases away the nonsense thought with a shake of his head. Cas isn’t even real.
Bobby narrows his eyes in suspicion at the approaching car, then grabs a flask of holy water and a silver knife. The car stops at the end of the driveway.
Dean heads for the door, but Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder. “I got this house warded for a reason, boy - we let him come to us.”
Bobby’s a paranoid bastard, but he’s also right most of the time. Dean nods and swallows his excitement and trepidation and waits by the door.
The Impala’s headlights shine steadily on through Bobby’s windows.
Bobby shifts impatiently. “What the hell is he waiting for,” Bobby mutters.
The horn on the Impala blares.
“Guess he wants us to go out to him,” Dean says, quirking an eyebrow at Bobby.
“Careful, kid," Bobby warns. “If that idiot's not possessed, he's sure as hell acting like he is. Grab your shootin’ arm."
Dean nods and grabs his shotgun from the study. He throws a prosthetic arm quickly over his shoulder and attaches the harness in a long-practiced motion. The homemade prosthesis is basically just a shooting rest. He’s thought a lot about making a literal shotgun arm, because how awesome would that be? Unfortunately, Bobby threatened to kick him out the last time he transmuted a firearm. “Good way to get yourself killed,” he’d said. Lame.
Armed up, they emerge cautiously from the back door, guns half-raised as they survey the area.
“Dad?” Dean calls out, shielding his eyes. It’s too dark to see into the car, not with the blinding headlights still on.
“Bobby! Dean?” It’s coming from the car, like it’s a broadcast playing on the Impala’s radio. The voice, though, it sounds just like -
“Sammy?” Dean says, shocked.
“Dean!” that weird scratchy-stereo-Sammy-voice says again. The headlights dim, and then the roof light clicks on, illuminating the Impala’s interior. Its empty interior.
Bobby immediately jumps back to the doorway and pulls up his shotgun, pivoting to take in the entire scene. “Balls!” he curses into the empty junkyard. “What the hell is going on here?”
But Dean feels his leg go weak as the realization hits him. He hops backwards down the stairs before Bobby can stop him. “Dean!” Bobby protests, following him.
Dean reaches the Impala and touches the hood gently. “No way,” he breathes. “It worked?”
“Yeah, Dean, it worked,” Sammy says from the car stereo. The lights dim and brighten almost imperceptibly with each word.
“‘It worked’?” Bobby looks at Dean, looks at the empty Impala, looks back at Dean, and finally lowers his gun and narrows his eyes. “What ‘worked’?”
“The transmutation.” Dean can’t believe it. Dad told him - well, told Bobby -
“Son, you gotta give me a little more than that,” Bobby says, exasperated.
“That night…” Dean's chest tightens painfully, like it always does when he tries to think about what happened. He takes a deep breath and pushes the words out. “Sam's body was gone. Taken. But I was able to bind his soul.”
Horrified realization washes over Bobby’s face. “And you put it...?”
“It was the safest place I could find.” Dean shrugs.
“So this car,” Bobby gestured, clearly struggling to find words. “It’s....”
“It’s me, Uncle Bobby,” that scratchy, hollow version of Sam’s voice says through the Impala’s speakers. “It’s Sam.”