Through the Backwood by lies_unfurl for reeby10

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Title: Through the Backwood
Pairing: Dean/Benny
Rating: T
Any warnings: spoilers through Season 12


Now:

“Twelve states are vamp-free thanks to the Brits. They’ve basically been wiped out in the UK,” Sam says, urgency bleeding into his voice and gestures. “Dean, can’t you see how huge this is?”

Dean turns away, not answering. He knows.

*
Then:

He goes to Louisiana when he thinks he’s going to die, when Amara’s at her strongest and he can already feel the heat of thousands of souls bubbling beneath his skin. He goes early in the morning, and he goes without Sam. Leaves a quick note – Be back late tomorrow night. Got some debts to settle first. It’s not a lie.

It’s been a long time since he’s been down in the bayou. Reminds him of Purgatory, in a way. Could just be the task that’s brought him down here, but he thinks there’s more to it. The air there had been as cold in its wetness as the air here is hot, but the scent was the same – a damp murk, a rot. If age could have a scent, this would be it, hours decaying upon hours. And then there’s the sense, the feeling of constantly being watched as he rows in deeper. He doesn’t know if the crawling on his skin is from mosquitoes or from the eyes of the animals lurking in the dark.

The Impala is hidden safely away, the boat rented from an old man in a shack at the end of the dock. He’d given Dean a once-over, hesitating, like maybe it wasn’t such a good idea letting some stranger go deep in the water in the dark. But the moon’s big tonight, and money talks, and the cash he’d handed over had spoken loud and clear.

The full moon guides him deeper into the water. There’s no map for where he’s going. Just vague references in dusty books in the bunkers, of a witch too old to be alive. Memories of hunts with his father, advice gruffly thrown out – it’s the witches south of the Mason-Dixie line you gotta watch out for. Lot of traditions come together into something damned powerful, and the heat just makes ‘em mad. And the occasional comment tossed out by Rowena -- there’s old magic down here, boys. Bring back the dead kind of magic, if you know where to look.

A light flickers out of the cypress trees, and he steers to the shack he can faintly make out. A lantern. She knew he was coming. Of course she did.

Dean ties his boat to the dock and pulls himself onto solid land. Something splashes behind him. A tree overhanging the dock drips Spanish moss, and he suppresses a shudder as he pushes through.

The door is open a crack. He doesn’t bother knocking.

There are no words that do justice to the antiquity written upon her face. This is not a woman who wastes her powers upon vanity.

Dean pulls the bourbon and tobacco from his bag and sets them on the table in front of her. He also places half the cash he brought in a fat stack. She looks at them, considering, and blows out smoke from her cigarette.

Her eyes, when they meet his, are incongruous with the rest of her. Dark and sharp. Young eyes.

“Winchester come to a witch. Must be something mighty big you’re after.”

She nods at the chair across from her. Dean sits, and he tells her, and when he’s done, she’s silent. Her cigarette has turned to ash.

“It’s been years since anyone’s asked deep magic of me,” she says finally. “Love spells. Healing potions. Emptying fishermen’s nets. Petty things. And the one who asks something different is the little boy who done killed so many of my sisters.”

She grins at Dean, teeth stained in tobacco. “I have half a mind to tell you to leave. Slip a hex bag in your pocket.”

Dean places his hands on the gifts he brought her. “Are we done?”

“No. No, I’ll do it. But I’ll need more than that.” She nods at the items on the table. “This is deep magic. Blood magic. Bone magic.”

She tells him what she needs, and he doesn’t say no.

*

Now:

Sam’s sleeping securely, content with the thought that Dean didn’t put up a fight. That things are fine now, and the world has a chance at being monster-free.

Dean doesn’t leave a note this time. He should – but it doesn’t matter, not really. Last time Sam had still pressed him for details, demanding to know Where were you and What the fuck did you do to yourself, Dean? Ignored Dean’s mumbled excuses of Got in an accident, Sam. Drop it.

And Amara made him whole again, and Sam had moved on to worrying about more pressing events, like being kidnapped and tortured, and Mom coming back, and all the other crises that had erupted.

Dean isn’t dumb enough to think he’ll get off the hook this time. He just doesn’t care. He knows that he should, he knows the secret he’s kept for almost a year can’t stay hidden forever. If hunting has taught him one thing, it’s that nothing buried ever really stays that way.

*

Then:

She takes the blood first. A cut in both palms, and one right over where his heart is. Collects the blood in a dingy container that might have once been a mason jar.

Dean doesn’t flinch. He wasn’t quite a teenager the first time he had to slice himself open for a spell.

The witch puts the containers aside and busies herself bustling around. She places more items on her workbench. Dried flowers and herbs. Dragon’s blood. Onyx, or some other dark stone. Other, less recognizable ingredients.

Outside, the bayou hums with frogs and bugs. Splashes. Something screeches nearby.

Not for the first time, Dean wonders if he’s making a mistake. Trusting a witch usually doesn’t end well, he knows that.

It doesn’t matter much though, right? He’s going to die anyway when he goes up against Amara. He doesn’t much like giving over his blood to some old crone – but it’s worth it, if it works. And if it doesn’t, he thinks selfishly, well, whatever the witch does won’t matter much to him. He won’t have to deal with the consequences.

“Don’t doubt me,” growls the crone, slamming an athame down upon the table. Dean jumps. “Shouldn’t have come if you didn’t think I could follow through.”

Dean doesn’t say anything. She laughs. “I’ve been calling up the dead since before your great-granddaddy put his first silver in a werewolf’s heart. Maybe it’s mostly been summoning spirits for séances. Maybe I’ve never brought someone back from the realm you’re asking. Don’t mean I can’t.”

She lights two candles, thick as Dean’s forearm and almost as long. One red, one black. The flame jumps tall, and right away he feels the heat against his face.

The witch tosses pinches of powders and dried herbs into the flames. The ashes that are spit out are collected in the jar with his blood.

Then she picks up the knife and begins running the blade between the flames, murmuring, mumbling really, in a language Dean can’t recognize. The metal begins glowing red-hot. Knowing what’s coming, Dean wants to curl his hands into fists. He keeps them laid out flat on the table.

“After I take it, go outside. You’ll know when it’s over. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She says something else in that murmuring language, and then she brings the blade down on the first knuckle of his right thumb. He screams and jerks his hand away, but the knife was sharp, and she packed one hell of a blow for an old lady.

He stumbles out into the night, clutching the remaining stump in his left palm. His hands still bleed from the cuts, but the thumb itself, he thinks distantly as he drops to his knees on the rickety dock, isn’t bleeding. Old lady knew what she was doing. The knife cauterized it.

Another screech out in the dark. Coyote, he thinks. Could be a bobcat.

All at once, the bayou reminds him far too much of Purgatory. Not just scents or the sense of being watched, but being alone and injured out where no one knows him, and god he’s such a fucking idiot why didn’t he tell Sam where he was going why did he come out here; good things don’t happen to him and he can never regain what’s been lost

Behind him, a sound like the world splitting open. And before he can turn around—

“Dean?”

And then he’s standing, and Benny is there, stained in mud and blood, clothes little more than rags upon him, and then Benny is holding him up, and their lips are together, and all the negative associations he has with Purgatory slip away. Because his arms are around the only thing that mattered from Purgatory.

“Told you I’d bring you back,” Dean mutters when they break away. “Told you.” He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes.

Benny catches his wrist and turns his palm to him. The thin line where the old woman cut is just visible in the bright moonlight. Benny presses Dean’s hand to his mouth. His tongue traces the outline, and Dean shudders, feeling weak for reasons that have nothing to do with the pain.

“Witches?” Benny murmurs. “That’s risky, chief. Not a bet you should’ve taken on account of me.”

“Worth it,” Dean shoots back. He presses his cheek against Benny’s beard. His kisses trace their way up to Benny’s ear. He whispers, “And I might’ve just said my lover got trapped in Purgatory. Might’ve left out the part where you were a vampire.”

Benny steps back from him just as the door to the hut creeks open. He looks at Dean, and he grins. Moonlight reflects off pointed teeth.



Dean pulls away from Benny first that morning. His hand throbs. He can feel Amara out there, waiting for him. “You gonna stay down here?”

“Think I might.” Benny glances around. “It’s a nice place. Can probably get a generator, update it a bit. Don’t think anyone’ll realize that it’s changed hands.”

Dean nods. “I’ll leave my phone with you. Assuming there’s reception out here, I’ll know where to call. What about feeding? You’ll be okay?”

“There’s wildlife out here to keep me busy. And I think that old crone had blood enough to keep me full for a good while. You going back to Sam?”

“Yeah. Uh. Didn’t tell him I was coming down here.” Dean turns away. “I know he came around to you in the end. But I never told him all of it.”

He doesn’t say that there’s a hell of a difference between being friends with a vamp that saved his life, and rolling around in the sheets with said vampire. That they don’t have a great track record when it comes to bedding monsters.

He doesn’t need to say it, really. Benny knows.

Benny reaches out and grabs his hand, caressing the burnt stub where Dean gave over flesh and bone to open up the portal. “I get it. Off to save the world. It’s what you do.”

Dean nods. He hasn’t mentioned Amara. It’s not fair, really, to bring Benny back and then leave. He figures he’ll write a confession up, leave it for Sam and Cas to find. They can tell Benny what he’s too coward to admit now.

He kisses Benny again. “I’ll call,” and then he’s outside, rowing back with bandages wrapped round the cuts on his hands.

*

Now:

“You can’t stay here,” Dean says, pacing the length of the shack. It’s too small, even now that Benny’s cleaned it out and dumped most of the crap the witch accumulated over centuries. “Fuck. They’re gonna find you, man.”

Benny watches him, arms folded across his chest. “They really think they’ve wiped us out across the pond?”

“And closer than that. They’ve been working across the Midwest. They haven’t even been here that long, and they’ve killed more vamps than Sam or I have in our lives.” Dean stills and leans against the rotting wood of the wall. He closes his eyes. “I don’t think I can stop them, Benny. Mom and Sam are in deep, and there’s nothing I can do.”

A hand on his arm, and then his shoulders. Benny leans in and kisses him. He’s not in the mood, too agitated to really do anything, but he finds himself kissing back all the same.

“The Men of Letters can go fuck themselves,” Benny says when he pulls back.

Dean sighs. “Yeah, well, you can tell that to them when they blaze in here, guns drawn. It’s not gonna make things much better.”

“Look. The Brits have wiped us out across the Midwest, fine. You know what sort of vamps live in the Midwest?”

Dean raises his eyebrow.

“Stupid ones. Midwest ain’t discrete. Can’t hide in cornfields.”

Dean pushes him away. “You’re not taking me seriously. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but these guys—”

“Are bad news. I get it. But you told me they’re hunting nests. They’re hunting idiots who think that banding together makes them strong.”

His hands twine around Dean’s flannel. “See, these Brits aren’t accounting for the fact that they’re not in England anymore. They get results in the Midwest, they think they’ve got the place figured out.”

Hands move down to Dean’s hips. “You think a bunch of suits gonna be able to track down every bloodsucker hiding away in the mausoleums or crypts they’ve occupied for centuries? You think a bit of technology’s gonna give them eyes in every abandoned mansion across the Sunbelt?”

His forehead presses against Dean’s. “There’s power down here, Dean. There’s a reason that witch you found holed up in the bayou ‘stead of somewhere up north. Reason things like folk magic and hoodoo take root better here than anywhere else.”

“It won’t be enough,” Dean says. He kisses Benny, a rough tangle of tongue and teeth, trying to physically impart the message his words can’t sufficiently convey. “They get you, and what the hell am I supposed to do then? Huh? See if I can find another witch? Try to send myself to Purgatory instead?”

Benny’s hands are everywhere. He’s not listening, and Dean can’t think of anything else to say. “They got no power here, Dean. We’ll be fine.”

Dean closes his eyes and surrenders to the rhythm of Benny’s mouth, there in the old witch’s shack. A bird caws somewhere outside, and something splashes in the water. It’s not enough, he thinks, to trust the land to keep you alive. Not when you’re up against a foreign contaminant.

And all the same, it’ll have to do.