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"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face..." - 1 Corinthians 13:12
The antique mirror, just one of the many weird and wonderful paraphernalia they'd inherited from Rowena's estate, was the latest addition to Dean's room. They'd had problems with those in the past, which had initially given him pause for thought, but everything had seemed to be okay so far. Plus, given that it was elegant, full length and free-standing, it was pretty damned cool.
Kinda like me, Dean chuckled, checking himself out, unable to help but admire his own reflection. And his new jacket was pretty cool too, if he did say so himself. Sure, he missed his dad's leather coat which had been lost years back, but it was good to be his own man at last, not so much living in someone else's shadow. Still, talking of shadows, he was looking a little dark around the eyes, he realized with mild concern. He leaned in closer, turning his head from left to right and back again as he inspected the fine lines that time had etched into his face. Yeah, still got it, he snorted while giving a sly wink to his handsome reflected double.
He stepped back and half-turned hurriedly at the faint sound of Sam approaching. Still got that, too, he thought as he bid his brother a nonchalant "What's up?"
"You okay?" replied Sam with a knowing smirk plastered across his face.
"All good," Dean replied innocently, tugging absently on his shirt cuffs for want of something to do with his hands while desperately trying not to give himself away by looking towards the mirror. Yeah, he knows me so well.
"So, what are we going to do with this thing?" Sam ran one hand absently down the ornately carved side of the mirror frame. He opened his eyes after a blink that was just a shade too long to be normal. "It's definitely magical," he added, picking up on Dean's stony expression.
Dean took a half step back from the thing and peered at it suspiciously. "Sonofabitch, I was afraid of that! Damn Rowena, what did she do with this one?"
Sam let out a deep, drawn-out breath. "Maybe used it for scrying? Her notes on her work weren't always exactly comprehensive..." He shrugged again with a wry smile.
"Should we just smash it?" asked Dean reluctantly. It would be a terrible shame, it was a good-looking piece of furniture and the only decent-sized mirror they had in the bunker, and he was already quite taken by it.
"Don't you think we've already got enough bad luck?" Sam chuckled. "Nah, whatever it is, for now it seems tamped down from all the wards in this place," he gestured around at the bunker's surroundings. "Plus, you never know when it might come in useful. I'm sure it'll be fine."
"Famous last words," muttered Dean mutinously, although he was relieved. He glanced at his watch. "C'mon, time's a wasting."
Something from the direction of the mirror flickered in the corner of his eye. He paused, frown once again crinkling the delicate set of lines around his eyes. But now I know they make me look distinguished. He snorted at his reflection before following Sam out of the room.
~#~
The warehouse was huge and dark, squatting low and wide on the landscape like some kind of giant, malignant toad that had seen better days. Dean instinctively knew it was going to be trouble just from the sight of it. Years of neglect and exposure to the elements were not going to make this a pleasant or safe experience for sure, and that was before factoring in whatever supernatural critter was lurking within.
"You know, I've never understood how TV manages to get it all so wrong," complained Dean as he rummaged through Baby's trunk for a suitable weapon.
Sam gave an absentminded, questioning grunt without looking away from his own inspection of the building.
"What I mean is, if you're gonna live forever, you'd have hoped it would be all elegant clothes and debauched parties in New Orleans and not slumming it in a dump like this in the middle of nowhere."
"I'll never understand how you find the time to watch so much TV," remarked Sam, shaking his head as he led the way in.
~#~
The fight had been hard and fast and violent but over before they knew it. Eyes wild, Dean constantly scanned his surrounding for any sign of the next attack. "I think that's all of them," he gasped over one shoulder, displaying a near-supernatural ability to detect his brother's presence, given Sam's silent, careful approach.
Noting Sam's mute nod of agreement, Dean dropped forward to lean his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. "Phew, that was quite the workout."
"Gotta put you through your paces, old man," Sam teased, having already caught his own breath.
"Watch it, whippersnapper. I can still hold my own against you in a fight," Dean quipped, raising his machete in a mock salute. "And it'll take more than a couple of vamps losing their heads to get the better of me," he declared with a grin.
Sam lost his train of thought, along with a suitable retort, as he instead cocked his ear at the ominous, low creaking noise coming from directly above them. He had a bad feeling that the collateral damage they'd inflicted during the hunt had been more structural than any mere monster beheadings. "Come on," he called nervously, "This dump gives me the creeps, let's get out of here."
"Yeah, I'm right behind-"
And then the roof collapsed and carried on down through the floor beneath them.
~#~
Where moments ago Dean had stood, there was now a deep pit filled with a twisted, tangled mess of steel and debris.
Ears still echoing from the groan of metal, crash of stone, and the shattering of glass, Sam tamped down his panic to focus all his attention on finding his brother.
~#~
Dean awoke to a world of hurt, a thunderous ringing in his ears, and a sour taste of iron in his mouth. He lifted his face up out of a thick layer of dust, trying in vain to spit out the taste. Even that simple motion made him cry out in pain, although the sound was muffled by the ringing in his ears. He could feel something trickling down his face, and he rapidly blinked out the droplets welling in his eyes to clot in the dirt below him.
He struggled to raise a hand to his temple only to find he was pinned in place, his right arm above his head. Fighting the urge to panic, he ran a mental checklist of his body. He wiggled his fingers and toes and breathed a sigh of relief when everything seemed to respond. Even given the burst of adrenaline still coursing through his system, he could tell he was badly cut up in places and even worse bruised, but at least nothing appeared to be broken.
He managed to partially twist himself around, although the motion made hiss with pain throughout. It looked like he'd been lucky enough to land alongside a thick concrete pillar that had taken the bulk of the weight of falling debris. Lucky, or he most likely would have been crushed by the heavy concrete rubble now trapping him.
He had the strongest feeling that there was someone nearby. "Sam? Sammy?"
There was no answer. The hair stood up on the back of his neck as he knew it wasn't his brother. He pushed his right hand out, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the machete still within reach and he tilted the mirror-like silver blade to try to make out the space around him in the shadowy gloom.
His own face stared back at him balefully. The purple-rimmed, bloodshot eyes blinked out of time with his actual actions and seemed to twinkle with a dark hidden humor. As he struggled to swallow past the lump in his throat, his reflection broke into its own wide, feral grin, made all the more ghastly by the sight of the teeth stained red with blood. Despite the small size of the reflection, he could feel his doppelgänger getting closer, and he felt an overwhelming sense of danger as he instinctively knew the thing was coming for him.
I definitely hit my head and I know I blacked out, he told himself. It's just concussion, he repeated over and over, fooling neither himself nor whatever the other presence was. He'd felt mesmerized by the reflection, but in a brief moment of lucidity, it occurred to him to simply turn the machete away from him. The lack of reflection seemed to break the spell. Dean gave a shuddering sigh of relief as the sense of the threatening presence also faded and, without meaning to, he slipped back into unconsciousness.
~#~
Sam couldn't have told you how long it took to dig out his brother. Moments and hours, the conflicting answer felt equally likely. The moment of true indecision didn't present itself until he found himself cradling his brother's battered, but mercifully still breathing, body in his arms.
There was always the worry over seeking medical aid, especially since the world had become increasingly connected. It was progressively more difficult to keep on the down low and not helped given much of the media attention they'd received in the past. Alternatives were equally limited, and while they never liked to talk about it, without Bobby running interference, there was only so much Garth could do. The Winchester name wasn't exactly welcome in most hunter networks these days. In the end, prudence and blind habit won, and Sam took Dean back to the bunker.
Sam almost immediately regretted that decision; his brother was a big man, and unconscious he was a dead weight. Poor choice of words... He distracted himself with the thought they should get a wheelchair for this very eventuality, although there was no getting away from the inconvenience of the steep staircase down from the entrance.
Exhausted down to his very bones, Sam laid Dean out on his bed. Once again, he grimaced at his mentally chosen turn of phrase. Laid out... That had literally happened in the recent past under circumstances that Sam was not prepared to allow himself to think about. Instead, he needed to focus on keeping his brother alive, and even how Dean would bitch and moan about the bloodstains on the sheets.
Absently he swiped the hair away from Dean's forehead, noting that it was the longest he'd seen it in recent history.
He was prevaricating. He set to cleaning his brother up, keeping himself sane by focusing on one small task at a time. He tossed the heavy boots one by one to the corner of the room. The jeans were a mess, ripped beyond repair and crusted with blood. Gathering the medical kit kept in the room for this very purpose, he cut off the remains of the denim.
He pulled off the jacket ruefully, knowing that it was Dean's favorite. It looked stained beyond saving to him, but Dean could work miracles with laundry. The shirt beneath, however, was ripped at the neck and not worth saving, so fell prey to the scissors.
A noise, or maybe a motion at the very edge of his peripheral vision, was enough to make him look up at the large mirror standing in the farthest corner of the room. He shook his head, feeling foolish at the sight of his reflection wielding the wickedly sharp scissors in one hand. He looked... crazed.
Well, I feel crazed, he rationalized. He was always happy to take care of his brother, but somehow it felt wrong. Dean was the caregiver, the one who had taken such good care of him growing up and, to be honest, no matter how hard Sam might try to emulate, it clearly came more naturally to Dean.
Maybe that's why he felt such an odd feeling of wrongness as he gazed at the menacing reflection of him looming over his brother? Even to his own eyes, the scenario seemed one of foreboding threat rather than aid.
Feeling equally spooked and foolish, he grabbed a discarded comforter that at some point had slipped from the bed to pool forgotten until now on the floor. Gathering it in his hands, he lightly tossed it to billow out and parachute down over the free-standing mirror.
Sam stood and watched expectantly, almost expecting the cloth to billow out from whatever was now concealed beneath.
When nothing happened, he felt ridiculous, but not enough to make him willing to remove the material.
I'm just tired, he decided. "And not likely to get much rest soon," he sighed aloud, but uncaring of his discomfort, he turned back to take care of his brother.
Firmly putting aside the weird feelings, he gathered a bowl of warm water and a washcloth and set to work washing his brother's wounds. All too soon, the water was dirty and tinged with red. He hadn't even started with the sewing kit, but he knew deep in his heart that they would both heal and get through this.
~#~
Behind the magically-treated surface of the covered mirror, two shadowy presences floated in the ether, for now denied the forms they had been working so hard to perfect.
"Elbuort ekil kool owt esoht-" started the slightly larger of the pair before stopping to concentrate for a moment, seeming to become more solid before trying again. "You said those two look like trouble."
The other snorted at the obviousness of that statement. "That's what makes them perfect."
"So we just wait?" it demanded, making it clear that it didn't consider patience a virtue.
"Don't worry," said the second presence soothingly, smoothing out a wrinkle in the faintest hint of what might have been a jacket collar. "Something tells me we'll soon get another chance."
THE END