Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Dean and I found Sam and Millie in a bar. He stared into a glass of whiskey as Millie flipped through a magazine. "There you are. What are you doing?" Dean asked, taking a seat beside his brother.
Sam shrugged. "Having a drink."
Dean glanced at the clock. "It's two in the afternoon. Drinking whiskey?"
Sam shrugged again. "I drink whiskey all the time."
"Yeah, and I'm a freaking unicorn." Millie spoke up.
"No, you don't." Dean corrected.
"What's the big deal?" Sam asked.
I adjusted Evie on my hip, sighing. "Sam, you're drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon. Something's not right."
Sam rolled his eyes, looking to Dean. "You get sloppy in bars, hit on chicks all the time. Why can't I?"
"First of all, I don't hit on chicks...anymore." Dean said, glancing around. "Second of all, it's kind of slim pickings around here. What's going on with you?"
Sam shook his head, looking back at the glass. "I tried, Dean."
Dean looked at him for a moment. "To do what?"
"To save you."
Dean sighed. "Could I get a whiskey, double, neat."
"I'm serious, Dean." Sam said.
"No, you're drunk."
"Drunk, serious, brooding, same thing." Millie shrugged.
"I mean, where you're going...what you're gonna become." Sam said, tears in his eyes. He scoffed. "I can't stop it."
My eyes stung as I cleared my throat as Evie leaned forward and tugged on Dean's coat.
"I'm starting to think even Ruby can't stop it." Sam continued.
"We'll figure this out." I whispered, more so to myself than anything.
Dean--with an odd look in his eye--turned to me, lifting Evie into his arms.
"But really, the thing is no one can save you." Sam said.
"That's what I've been telling you." Dean replied.
"Yeah, you've been a bucket of sunshine about this whole situation." I sighed.
"No, that's not what I mean." Sam said. "I mean, no one can save you because you don't want to be saved. I mean, how can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you?"
"I've been asking the same question, Sammy. He doesn't have an answer." I muttered.
Dean's phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and Evie reached up to take it. He raised it to his ear as she grabbed onto his finger. "Hello?" He paused. "Yes, this is Mr. Sniderson...what? Where?" He asked, eyes wide and worry in his voice.
___
We stood at Bobby's bedside in the hospital with the doctor. "So what's the diagnosis?" Sam asked.
"We've tested everything we can think to test." The doctor shrugged. "He seem perfectly healthy."
"Except that he's comatose." Dean pointed out.
"Mr. Sniderson, you're his emergency contact. Anything we should know? Any illnesses?"
"No, he never gets sick. I mean, he doesn't even catch a cold." Dean explained.
I sighed, staring down at Bobby. This can't be happening. "Is there anything you can do? Anything at all?"
"Look, I'm sorry, but we don't know what's causing it, so we don't know how to treat it." The doctor began. "He just...went to sleep and didn't wake up."
___
"So, what was Bobby doing in Pittsburgh?" Sam asked as we walked into the motel Bobby had been staying in. It was empty. It looked nothing like a room a hunter would be in. It was bare.
"Unless he was taking an extremely lame vacation..." Dean trailed off, shutting the door behind himself.
"I mean, he must have been working a job, right?" Sam asked.
"Well, you think there'd be some sort of sign or something, you know?" Dean ran his hand over Evie's back as she rested her head against his shoulder, gripping his jacket in her small fist as we all moved around the room, searching for anything. "Research, news clippings...or a freaking pizza box or a beer can."
"How are those things helpful to hunting?" I asked, closing the drawer of the bedside cabinet.
"Nutrition." Dean smiled at me.
"Those things are not nutritious at all." I pointed out.
Sam opened the closet, clicking on the light. "How about this?" He asked as we moved closer. He shoved the clothes out of the way to reveal maps, notes, new clippings and picture of mushrooms taped to the back wall.
"You think he's getting into the drug business?" Millie asked. "Selling 'shrooms?"
I sighed. "No, Millie, we don't think that."
"Why? Because the lore didn't say so?"
Dean chuckled. "Good old Bobby, always covering up his tracks."
"What do you have against lore?" Sam asked.
"I don't know." Millie shrugged.
"You make heads or tails of any of this?" Sam asked no one in particular.
Dean plucked a paper from the wall. "'Silene capensis,' which, of course, means absolutely nothing to me."
"Wow, Dean, that is so helpful." I remarked.
Dean gave me a look.
"Here, obit." Sam picked a paper from the wall. "'Dr. Walter Gregg, 64, university neurologist.'"
"How'd he bite it?" Dean asked.
"Um, actually, they don't know." Sam answered. "They say he just went to sleep and didn't wake up."
"That sound familiar to you?" Dean asked.
"Alright, um...so let's say Bobby was looking into the doc's death." Sam began. "Hunting after something--"
"That started hunting him." Dean filled in, handing Evie over to me. She stirred, blinking open her tired blue eyes then settling down again.
"But what the hell is he hunting." I asked.
"Alright, stay here, see if you can make heads or tails of this." Dean gestured to the wall of papers. "You too, Si. You're smart, figure it out, 'kay?"
"What are you gonna do?" I asked.
"Look into the good doctor myself." Dean stated, leaning in to kiss me.
___
I walked into Bobby's hospital room to find Dean sitting by his bedside, just watching. He looked up and put on a smile as he reached for Evie. "How was the nap, huh?"
She giggled, babbling right back.
"How is he?" Sam asked.
"No change." Dean ran a hand over his jaw before standing. "What you got?"
"Well, considering what you told me about the doc's experiments, Bobby's wall is starting to make a hell of a lot more sense." Sam began, flipping open the file he and I had put together. Apparently, the doctor had been doing sleep experiments on people without the university knowing.
"How so?" Dean asked, setting a hand on my waist.
"Well, the plant that means nothing to you, Silene capensis is just fancy speak for African Dream Root." I explained.
"It's been used by shaman and medicine men for centuries." Sam added.
"Let me guess. They dose up, bust out didjeridus, start kicking around the hackey." Dean looked over at us.
"Do you even speak English?" Millie asked.
"Not quite." Sam said. "If you believe the legends, it's used for dreamwalking. Entering another person's dreams, poking around in their heads."
"I take it we believe the legends?" Dean asked.
"When don't we?" Sam asked.
"Whenever the legend says something good?" I suggested. "Then we tend to be like 'nah, nope, not true.'"
"Anyway, dreamwalking is the tip of the iceberg." Sam continued.
"What do you mean?" Dean asked.
"I mean, this dreamroot is serious mojo. You take enough of it, with enough practice, you become a regular Freddy Krueger. You can control anything."
"The concept of Freddy was creepy but the movies just executed it badly." I stated as Evie leaned over Dean's arm, holding her arms out to me.
"You could turn bad dreams good, you could turn good dreams bad." Sam continued.
"And killing people in their sleep?" Dean said.
"For example." Sam nodded. "So let's say, uh, let's say this doc was testing this stuff on his patients, Tim Leary style."
"Somebody gets pissed at him, decides to give him a dream visit, he goes nighty-night." Dean added.
Evie babbled as if she agreed.
"Ha. She agrees with me this time." Dean gave me a look.
"Whose shoe did she give to Lady to chew on again?" I asked.
"What about Bobby?" Sam asked. "I mean, if the killer came after him, how come he's still alive?"
"I don't know." Dean sighed.
"Well, Bobby's a tough guy. Maybe he's harder to kill than they thought." I shrugged.
___
"So how do we find out homicidal sandman?" Dean asked as he reached into the bag slung over my shoulder and pulled out Evie's bottle while we walked through the hospital.
"Could be anyone." Sam stated.
"Okay, Sam, that was just unhelpful. We know that." I pointed out.
"Yeah, anyone who knew the doctor and had access to his dream shrooms." Dean nodded.
"Maybe one of his test subjects or something?" Sam suggested.
"Possible. But his research was pretty sketchy." Dean told us as Evie placed her hands on top of his that was holding the bottle. "I mean, I don't know how many subjects he had or who all of them were."
Sam scoffed. "In any other case, we'd be calling Bobby and asking him for help right now."
"Because we're too reliant on the man." Millie piped up.
"You know what? You're right." Dean told Sam.
"Wow, nice one, Sam." I patted his shoulder.
"Let's go talk to him." Dean said.
"Sure, but I think we might find the conversation a bit one-sided." Sam replied.
"Not if we're tripping on some dream root."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Yeah, honey, we heard you, but that's...crazy." I told him.
Dean gave me a look. "As you like to tell me we love crazy."
"You wanna go dreamwalking in Bobby's head?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. "Yeah. Maybe we could help."
"That is, like, the most privacy invading thing we could do." I said.
"We have no idea what's in there." Sam added.
"How bad could it be?" Dean asked.
"Bad."
"Dude, it's Bobby."
"Yeah, you're right." Sam caved. He scoffed. "One problem, we're fresh out of African Dream Root. So unless you know someone who can score some..."
Dean stared off, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought. "Crap. Bela."
"Bela?" I asked.
"Crap." Sam and I say in union.
"You're actually suggesting we ask her a favor?" Sam asked.
"I feel dirty just thinking about it, but yeah." Dean nodded as he placed the empty bottle back in the bag and patting Evie on the back.
"This will be fun, won't it?" I asked.
"Super." Dean placed a hand on my waist, leading me toward the exit.