Title: Dreams

Claim: Highlander General Series

Fandom: Highlander/Supernatural

Characters/Pairing: Methos, Sam, Dean

Prompt: #35 Sixth Sense

Word Count: 1901

Rating: 13-15ish

Author's Notes: written for crossovers100. Mortal Ties Arc IV.

Sam awoke with a scream. Within less than a heartbeat Dean and Methos were both on their feet. Methos with his Ivanhoe in one hand and Glock in the other. Dean had his hunting knife, the one with the twelve inch blade that could cut bone, made of blessed steel inlaid with iron and silver.

Sam looked from one to the other, the lingering terror of the dream chased away by the very real possibility of getting killed accidentally for having a nightmare. Especially when they were stuck sharing not only a room but a bed. A king sized bed, thankfully, but it was the only room not occupied or presently being fumigated according to the desk clerk and they'd been too tired to try getting any further.

Sam and Dean shared a bed just as often as not when they'd been kids and went hunting with their dad, right up til the day Sam left for Stanford. Money was tight more than not. They had never thought anything of it. It was one of the less bizarre aspects of their life. Sharing a motel bed with your brother while traveling was less weird than the fact that you were traveling to hunt down an evil monster of some sort or another. Methos was equally untroubled by the fact. He'd lived through times when piling a half dozen titled guests in a bed had been normal, it'd been the important guests that got crammed as many as would fit in a bed, less important guests got a straw pallet on the floor or or just the floor and as packed together as those in the beds.

"Nightmare, Sammy?" Dean asked with worried eyes once he realized they weren't being attacked.

Sam closed his eyes. He didn't want to have this damn discussion. Dean was pushier about the nightmares since Toledo. Since Mary.

"Nightmare or vision, Samuel John?" Methos asked, his eyes pinning Sam to the bed and made him want to squirm, his voice harsh and demanding.

"Vision?" Dean frowned.

"Your grandmother had dreams, rare but she had them. Your great grandmother was a full fledged seer, insane or not. Yes, Vision or nightmare, Samuel?"

"I think I prefer Sammy" Sam muttered.

"Samuel," Methos demanded.

"Nightmare."

Methos stared all that much harder.

"Nightmare about a vision?" Sam said hopefully, praying they would let it go at that, knowing they wouldn't.

"And that means what?" Methos wasn't giving up.

~*~*~*~

Suddenly it made sense to Dean, what Sammy had been holding back in Toledo. "You had a vision about Jess?"

The answer was in Sam's eyes when they shot to Dean.

It all fell into place.

"You dreamt the Monster In The Closet for two solid weeks before it showed up." Dean decided. He didn't need Sam's nod to confirm that. For two weeks before Sam finally spoke up and told their father there was a monster, Dean had woken up to find his brother curled up in a ball at the foot of his bed in such a cramped position that it had to be painful even for the malleable body of a nine-year-old. Dean remembered wincing at the way Sammy was curled up and he'd been not quite thirteen, with a lot fewer scars and occasional lingering pain from long healed injuries to make him realize how much a person could hurt from sleeping wrong.

"That was the only time." Sam murmured, pleadingly. "Least--I thought it was stress, nightmares. Not-- I didn't--"

"Oh, Sammy" Dean sat back on the bed, scooting closer to Sam and sliding his knife back under his pillow with the same movement.

"Well, next time you know." Methos said nonchalantly.

"NEXT TIME I KNOW! JESSICA IS DEAD YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" Sam screamed at Methos.

Dean sat back. He hoped there wasn't going to be bloodshed. Sam looked pissed enough to kill, which might get some of the anger out of his system but Dean just didn't feel like trying to keep blood from setting in bedding and carpets at four in the damned morning.

"Did you know it was a vision?"

"NO" Sam ground out. Then. "Maybe. But...I...I was NINE. I had convinced myself the nightmares came after I shot the damn thing in my closet. It never happened again. Until..."

"Did you see any possible way you could have prevented it in your dreams? See anything you could kill? Any hint of what it was and how to stop it?"

Sam shook with both rage and pain, tears shining in his eyes unshed, fists clenched at his sides. "Nothing. Just her..."

"In other words you saw nothing that could have stopped it. Didn't have any indication you could dream like that. Didn't know about Alice. Didn't know your grandmother Jane had maybe a handful of dreams that didn't tell her what was going to happen but left her with a feeling something was going to happen soon. Nothing you could have done." Methos surmised.

"But--" Sam trailed off.

"What about you, Dean Matthew?" Methos demanded.

"What the hell is with the middle names?" Dean bitched.

"Well?"

"Nah, never had a vision, or a dream that happened."

"You know though. You always know when it's important." Sam spoke up.

"What?" Dean frowned.

"The night Jess died you came back." Sam said

Dean shook his head. "Just got a funny feeling in my gut is all."

"The Wendigo in Colorado. You--you were there right in time. Those caves..."

"I followed the sound."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You ass, the caves echoed and twisted and curled back around it was almost impossible, not how quickly you--"

"It only works for you." Dean said.

"What?"

"My Sam Radar. Only works for you. Hell, dad missed a weeks' check ins before I got more worried than usual. You...if you're in real trouble I know it. Might not know fuck all else but I know if you're in trouble."

"Sammy, you might never have another dream, ever." Methos said quietly.

"You think I will" Sam accused.

"Something life-threatening involving Dean definitely. If you marry and have children, them almost undoubtedly. If Dean has a family, probably them too at least his children. Your father possibly. You're more than likely just a bit stronger than your grandmother, she only had a sense of something coming from her dreams. And only ever if it was something connected to her mother or Mary. You get a more vivid dream but it doesn't seem like you have much more than that. It's only immediate family that you dream about isn't it?"

Sam closed his eyes and sagged, broken and defeated. "I dreamt every scar Dean has. I should have known."

Methos nodded unsurprised. "And the dreams Dean got hurt in, how often did you know what you were facing and had some idea of how Dean could get hurt."

"Most but even the new ones. New scars. Scars he got from the time I left for college til dad went missing. There's one on his back that he didn't have when I went to college. Zombie threw him against a tree got gouged really bad by the stumpy end of a broken off branch."

Dean's eyes widened. He hadn't told Sam that story.

"When I was nine. I dreamt that it killed me and took Dean."

Methos nodded again.

"I should have known." Sam said again.

"How?"

Sam looked at Methos in disbelief.

"Your other dreams explained away like they were. The mind likes to keep things in comfortable places so thinking you dreamt it the night after instead of the night before...you didn't know it was a possibility. Your mom died before either of you were old enough to show any gift, or to even understand her telling you what she knew of the family history. Prophetic dreams is something that the mindset of this time is not easily capable of dealing with."

"I've been hunting creatures and demons all my life!" Sam shot back. "I should have--"

"You didn't know, you didn't realize, and nothing you saw could have helped," Methos pointed out.

"But--"Sam looked at him.

"Sammy, why do you think your great-grandmother went insane before she was thirty? She saw--multiple things hourly. Awake and asleep. Mundane and supernatural, far past, future, things that happened at the moment. There likely was nothing you could have done to stop it if you'd been in the same room the entire time."

Sam seemed to shrink, shattered and just too hurt and exhausted to keep a hold of his anger.

Now sure Sammy wasn't going to start swinging at either one of them, Dean scooted a little closer and put his arm around his brother. Sammy leaned over, put his head down on Dean's shoulder and half-curled toward him, just like he had when he was little. Their dad hadn't been much for cuddles, too broken inside from their mother's death, too determined his sons would survive whatever was out there. John Winchester's entire existence centered on avenging his wife's death. His sons he loved as much as he was able, but he raised them as warriors of his crusade not as normal children. It had always been Dean who hugged Sammy and wiped away tears, wrapped sprained wrists and iced injured shoulders from gun-kickbacks that a seven or eight year old's body just couldn't absorb. Kissed and cleaned cuts and scrapes, most not acquired the way a normal three, four, five, or six year old got them.

"Jess and mom still died because of me." Sam whispered into Dean's shoulder.

"Bullshit!" Dean growled. "Not your fault, Sammy."

"If Mary and your Jessica died because of you, all you did to provoke their murders was be born. Shall we blame your mother instead, since she's the one that gave birth to you?" Methos demanded.

"All I ever wanted was a normal life. Leave..leave the demons behind. Just..." Sam said in a quiet voice that fluctuated between anger and simply broken.

"Doesn't work that way." Methos said as he reached in the cooler he had insisted on bringing with him, a cooler continuously stocked with beer. He grabbed a beer and opened it, the cap given a fling for housekeeping to deal with when they left. "I've been married sixty nine times. Raised, or partially raised over a hundred children. I've outlived them all. I'll out live both of you, your children and grandchildren and their grandchildren. Don't you think I'd like a nice normal life once in a while? Only get a piece here and there. Enough to hurt like hell when it's over."

"That'd probably be a lot more moving and profound if you weren't standing in your boxers drinking a beer in the middle of a hotel room," Dean smirked trying to get a smile out of Sam. He got a snort and an eye roll, that was something at least. "Hundred kids...no wonder you're so good at the whole turning full names into threats to confess or else thing."

Methos snorted and sat down on the bed.

"I--"

"We know, Sammy" Methos said quietly. Dean gave his brother a squeeze. Methos finished his beer in four long swallows. "Now, the both of you, the next one that decides we need a family heart to heart at four in the bloody morning is going to be put over my knee and the flat of my sword taken to their arse!"

~*~

Sam fought sleep. It wasn't until daylight was peeking through the curtains that he drifted off with Methos hand lightly against his back and Dean still holding onto him, cuddling him like he hadn't in years. The last time had been the monster in the closet probably.