Work Text:
“Green,” Sam said, eating his green salad and wearing his green jacket. “The bunker has a lot of green in it already, and it’s got a lot of wood and tan stone. Green would match.”
Dean got tired of a lot of things, but he never got tired of this conversation. “Green like my eyes. Right, Sammy?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I’m talking about a darker green, like olive. Yours are too light. And it’s Sam.”
Dean clutched his chest, mocking hurt, smiling wide. “You wound me, Mr. Interior Designer.”
Sam huffed, looking away. “Just finish your meatballs so we can start looking.”
Dean pushed the aforementioned meatballs around in the gravy on his plate. He had already eaten today, or yesterday. Something like that. He wasn’t hungry.
He got up and walked his tray to the cafeteria disposal. When he turned around Sam and their table were gone and the dimly lit art aisle was laid out before him. Stuffing a sigh back down his throat, he weaved through the patrons admiring the mass-produced prints. Dean walked. And walked.
And walked.
It was amazing how the human mind managed to convince his heart he was lonely when he was surrounded by people at all times. It was a crushing, negative force nestled between his lungs, adjacent to the muscle pumping blood through his chest. It made everything sharper. It made everything cut.
Sam crouched to examine the tag on a double-bowl stainless steel sink. Dean reached down and entwined their arms. His brother looked up quizzically, brows furrowed, and looked down at their joined arms.
“Dude,” was all he said. It wasn’t rejection. Maybe worry, definitely confusion. Dean closed his eyes and rested his head on Sam’s shoulder.
“You ever feel like you’re the last person in the world? Just give me a sec, Sam,” he tried not to plead.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Should we talk?”
“Probably,” Dean muttered. “But not now. Next time.”
He told Sam this round. The minutes ticked by, closer to the two hour mark.
“I thought Gabriel was dead,” Sam said. He was thinking of endless Tuesdays where Dean died in fantastic, crazy ways. There wasn’t anything fantastic or crazy about Dean’s loop. Just plastic and metallic products lining shelves, cardboard boxes towering in the warehouse. Suburbanite customers in muted blue jeans shuffling the length of the maze like wind up toys.
“If he isn’t, he’s not answering my prayers.” Dean had whispered and screamed them. Security had been the biggest deviation to the plot so far.
“How many times?” Sam asked quietly.
“I stopped counting after a hundred,” Dean lied. He capped a thousand before he decided the amount didn’t matter in the end. They were practically the same anyway. The only thing that ever changed was him. And even he was predictable.
There were only so many things to do in an IKEA.
He got two hours with Sam. That was how long they stuck together the first time, Round One. It always began at the front doors, Dean and Sam entering with a cart, and ended with Dean lost somewhere. He was certain some of the places he ended up couldn’t physically exist.
Like where he stood now. It was a long featureless service hallway. And he meant long . He walked for hours before stopping. It’s not like he was going anywhere. There were no doors or windows, just rectangular fluorescent lights above and the gray cement under his boots. The air was stale and smelled of cardboard. It looked like the sort of behind-the-scenes place employees would visit, evidenced by oft-scuffed walls, but no one was around.
For the first time in what felt like years, he was really alone. The silence and emptiness pressed against his eardrums like a physical force, trying to drive his brain out of his head.
He started walking again.
After awhile he thought maybe he heard human voices. Double doors appeared ahead and he picked up the pace. It was too much to hope it led him out of the maze, but maybe it would at least get him out of this isolating hallway.
He practically punched through the doors and barreled into Sam, who was pushing a cart away from the entrance and towards the elevators.
“Did you get a map?” Sam said as he joined the line.
A map wouldn’t make any difference. They were trapped in a closed loop. And Dean was back at the beginning.
“Sam,” he clung to his brother, who furrowed his brow in concern.
“Dean, are you okay?”
Dean grit his teeth, clinging harder. He’d have to tell Sam all over again, explain that their simple trip to IKEA was his new Hell.
How was Sam experiencing this anyway? He didn’t remember any of the other rounds and seemed just as much a wind up toy as the rest of the customers. Whatever this was, it wasn’t about Sam. It was about Dean.
They were in the cafeteria. Sam was listening, but said he couldn’t help Dean on an empty stomach. Dean accepted a plate of meatballs, mashed potatoes, and vegetables from the woman behind the counter. As always, he wasn’t hungry. But especially after that long stretch of hallway, Dean figured food couldn’t hurt.
Besides, his cash never depleted no matter how many rounds he bought food. It was almost fun to just keep buying endless plates of meatballs and finding his wallet replenished next round. Almost. He was definitely going to hate these meatballs for life.
The man at the cash register flashed him a crooked grin filled with yellow teeth. He had a weird name, Daryl or something. Dean never spent more than a moment looking at any of the staff’s name tags, just in case he started getting too attached.
“Beautiful weather out there, eh?” Daryl-or-something said like always. “Not as nice as Crete, though.”
“Yeah,” Dean responded automatically. “You from there? I’ve never been.”
The man rung up his food and nodded. “Born and raised. Ruins you for everywhere else.”
Sam was on his phone at the table, his cold salad nearing room temperature. “Okay, so you’re trapped in a loop. Like, Mystery Spot, Groundhog Day loop. You’re sure it’s not Gabriel?”
“I don’t know,” Dean grumbled as he sat down. “I mean, we saw him die, angel blade straight through the grace. Unless he’s good enough to trick a roomful of gods and Lucifer, then he’s not the one doing this. And I have this feeling that I would know if it was him.”
“I know what you mean,” Sam said darkly. “When this happened to me, he at least had the decency to show up eventually. My loop reset when you died. When does yours?” Sam suddenly put down his fork and eyed his salad like it might eat him. “Do I die?”
“You don’t choke on your salad, eat up. Nobody dies. Everything just happens the same. I get to see you for two hours and then I’m lost in the aisles forever. Then I show up at the entrance again and you’re there.”
Sam picked up his fork again and tentatively speared some iceberg lettuce. “How do you get lost in an IKEA? Dude, we got a map.”
Sam might be comfortable in large furniture showrooms but Dean definitely was not. “What, like you have a lot of experience with IKEA? This place is like a maze. How could you possibly navigate through four stories of domestic bullshit without getting lost?”
Sam mumbled something around a forkful of leaves that sounded like, “Amelia and I had to furnish the house somehow,” so Dean just ignored it.
“This is what’s always the same: I meet you at the front doors, we eat, we look at some furniture, we get seperated, I walk forever, and it starts again. I can change some things but it always goes back to the beginning and everything’s reset.”
Sam chewed thoughtfully. Light entered his eyes and he got that squinty-eyed look on his face like he would know the answer to a math problem if he could see it better.
“What is it?” Dean prompted.
“Maybe it’s getting lost that’s the key,” Sam said. “Maybe you’re supposed to find a way out. Like you said—a maze.”
“I can’t find a way out, though. That’s the thing, Sam. I just loop back around.”
Sam was back on his phone, fork abandoned as he typed furiously with his thumbs. Dean watched him work. He’d miss that intent gaze. It shut everything else out but what was right in front of him and it was so much more than he got from the wind up shoppers that crowded the aisles while he walked alone.
“Daedalus,” Sam finally said. “From Greek mythology. He was a master craftsman, built Icarus’s wings and the Labyrinth to house the Minotaur. They used to practically worship him.”
“So what, you think I’m stuck in a labyrinth? Like, with the Minotaur?”
“Or maybe the Labyrinth,” Sam said, putting his phone down. “Lore says it was a real place but excavators never found it. Lore also says the Minotaur is dead, so you probably won’t have to worry about that.” Sam watched him with those wretchedly sad puppy dog eyes. “Dean, only two people ever got out.”
“And soon it’ll be three.” Dean pasted a grin on his face for Sam, even though he wouldn’t remember it. Any iteration of Sam with eyes like that got Dean in a mood to reassure. “How did they get out?”
Sam sat back, salad forgotten, eyes still troubled. “The first was Daedalus himself, because he made it. The second was Theseus, who killed the Minotaur. The keeper of the Labyrinth fell in love with him and gave him a ball of string so he could find his way out.”
“Was there anything special about the string? Does it need a spell?”
Sam shook his head. “If it does, it didn’t say in the legend. Seemed like it was just ordinary string.”
Ordinary string. “That can’t be hard, right? This is IKEA, there’s got to be some regular string lying around.”
Turned out there was. Dean stood with Sam at the door to the car park. A big spool of twine was mounted at the loading area by the elevators, ready to lash people’s purchases to their cars. Dean couldn’t imagine doing such a thing to Baby. The potential for damage to the paint was too high.
But he didn’t need this twine for flat boxes of furniture, he needed it for his sanity.
“I’ll go get it,” Sam was saying, and he exited the building before Dean could stop him.
Dean blinked and he was in the kitchen wares aisle. He didn’t sigh, didn’t scream, didn’t sob and curl into the fetal position on the floor, and he should get a medal for that. Instead, he started walking.
“Then maybe it’s not the twine,” Sam said.
“What else could it be?” Dean gestured around the cafeteria to demonstrate an unlikely array of products. Sam sampled his salad. Dean was farther from hungry than he’d ever been, after endless attempts to get to the twine at the loading area. He was so close to a way out, but every time it seemed to be within reach, the maze tightened his leash and snapped him back in again. “You said there was no spell.”
“I don’t remember that round, but I think maybe you don’t either.”
Dean bristled. Sam put up his hands to placate him.
“What else did I say?” Sam asked, gentle as always.
“Daedalus got out because he made it. Theseus got out because some girl gave him string.”
“So, someone is holding it,” Sam surmised. “We just have to find out who.”
Dean walked and thought he remembered Sam’s smile.
“Did you get a map?” Sam said as he joined the line for the elevators to the cafeteria. Dean walked right past him until Sam stopped him in his tracks with a quizzical, “Dean?”
He’d forgotten what Sam looked and sounded like. Making an about face, Dean stomped up to Sam and pulled him into a crushing hug, getting a few stares from the people behind them in the line. He inhaled the girly shampoo Sam used on his hair and clutched at the rough cotton of his too-often-washed flannel. He couldn’t let the Labyrinth take his most important thing again.
They got into the elevator alone, the rest of the line giving them a wide berth. Dean sank to the floor as the doors closed, trying to breathe again.
“Sammy, I can’t do this again, I just can’t, I can’t,” he babbled. “I can’t get the string, I keep losing you.” His voice cracked. It was just endless.
Sam convinced him upright and put his arm around his too-tall shoulders, supporting him into a chair in the cafeteria. He took the seat right next to him and kept up the touch—a hand on the shoulder, knee, back, hand. Dean explained and Sam gave him the too-sad puppy eyes. Just like any other round.
“I’ll go get us some food, you must be starving after all that walking,” Sam said.
Dean wasn’t, he was never physically tired or hungry in this place, but he couldn’t put up with two hours of worried and hungry Sam. He got bitchy without his leaves.
“Let me do it,” Dean said. “I like paying for it.”
He got Sam’s salad out of the refrigerated cases and accepted a plate of meatballs out of habit. At the cash register, he finally broke and looked at Daryl’s name tag. If he was here forever, might as well get to know who his cellmates were.
He read the name and stared, mouth open.
The man flashed him a yellow, crooked grin. “Beautiful weather out there, eh? Not as nice as Crete, though.”
“Yeah,” Dean responded automatically. “That’s in Greece, right?”
The man rung up his food and nodded. “You catch on quick. Only took you a few thousand tries.”
His name tag read: Daedalus.
“You son of a bitch, let me out!” Dean grabbed the collar of Daedalus’ yellow-striped polo and hauled him towards the line, ignoring the gasps and exclamations from other customers. The man was short with tanned skin and a weathered face. Easily someone Dean could take on. He was still smiling gamely in the face of Dean’s rage. “I swear I will end you if you don’t let me go.”
“That’s not how it works,” the man said calmly. “Maybe let go of my shirt and we can talk about this before someone calls security.”
“I’ve been here for years!”
“On the contrary, you haven’t even been here a day.”
“How long have you been here?” Dean swore the name tag really said something like Daryl at first, but he didn’t remember anyone but Daedalus and his crooked grin at the cash register.
Daedalus shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s possible I’ve been here for eternity. I don’t know. You only wandered in recently. I haven’t seen a hero since Theseus.”
“Hero?” Dean scoffed. He was some idiot who got caught in a maze. He and Sam were in a good spot but that only lasted weeks in a stretch. He couldn’t keep a handle on Cas. Sure, he helped stop the Apocalypse, but where it mattered, where it hurt, he failed.
“I know what you’re thinking and I’ll reassure you—you’re the hero. The Greek kind. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
“Great, so I’m trapped because some semi-sentient maze thinks I’m a hero. What does that even mean for me? The myth said Theseus—the hero, I guess—defeated the Minotaur. But that would mean the Minotaur is dead, so I can’t defeat it.”
Daedalus sat back and raised an eyebrow, encouraging Dean to continue.
“Then he ran off with some girl.”
“With his love,” Daedalus said.
“Sure, but I don’t have that.”
“Dean,” Daedalus sighed. “You are so close. I can’t tell you, because you wouldn’t be the hero if you didn’t figure it out yourself, but you’re only just missing the key. Think.”
Dean had been thinking for what seemed like years. Daedalus gave him a little more to go on, but not much. Only heroes could leave the Labyrinth. Theseus slayed the Minotaur and had string to lead him back out. If Dean had to follow in Theseus’ footsteps, he needed to get string from a girl at the start of the maze, go to the center to kill a monster, and then find his way back out.
Or maybe, he could be more general than “a girl at the start of the maze.” Dean caught Daedalus’ eye and smirked at the gleam there. Daedalus knew he’d get it.
“I need to get a guide from my love at the beginning,” he said, and Daedalus nodded.
“Who do you love?”
“Sam,” Dean said immediately and it dawned on him. He wasn’t the only one trapped in the maze. Theseus’ girl hadn’t been able to leave until Theseus got out. Sam was trapped with him. That was why when Sam left the building, Dean was catapulted into a new part of the Labyrinth and Sam was always back at the start.
It was the first real explanation he’d had for any of the Labyrinth since Round One and it explained more than just his own predicament.
“That’s why you can’t leave, you don’t have a love waiting for you at the entrance.”
Daedalus crossed his arms and leaned heavily into the chair. “You know what happened to my son, Icarus. He was my key. I left Crete for awhile but she called me back. She ruins you for everywhere else. I went into the Labyrinth to atone but as you can see, it’s just meatballs.”
“I need to get out,” Dean said to stave off any more conversation about an old supposed-to-be-dead guy’s problems. “I need a map or something. Do you have landmarks? Secret passages?”
“You’re too materialistic,” Daedalus scolded and Dean only took a little offense. He practically lived out of a car, he was hardly someone to horde. But Daedalus meant it another way.
Daedalus pulled an IKEA-branded paper tape measure out of a pocket in his striped polo. Dean recognized it from where they handed them out for free at the entrance. He ripped it into squares and laid them on the table in a horizontal line between them.
“This is how you think of time—a single line with one destination. And that’s how many people experience it. If you treat the maze like this, of course you’re trapped. You just keep walking in an infinite line. Because this is how the maze is…”
He scattered the line until the pieces were dotted across the tabletop. Then he switched them around and scattered them again.
“Like the stone under the street magician’s cup, you’re shifted between moments seamlessly.” Daedalus frowned down at the paper. “Of course, this is a rough approximation. I fashioned the Labyrinth out of time and dimensions your modern world doesn’t even acknowledge…”
“And?”
Daedalus seemed for a moment like he might actually smack Dean for interrupting what was no doubt about to be a long and proud explanation of metaphysics, but he must have found enough chill, because he simply said, “You’re not in a time loop. Rather, everything has already happened and nothing has happened at all.”
Dean blinked to express his confusion and Daedalus disappeared. Instead, Sam sat in his chair, munching on the greens Dean brought him and scrolling on his phone like nothing had happened.
The Labyrinth wasn’t made of mortar and stone, or even the cement and steel of the IKEA. The Labyrinth was made out of his mind, his perception of time. Or something equally mind-numbingly complex.
Dean called out, “So what’s the trick? Tap my heels together three times and wish for home?”
Sam looked up from his phone, still chewing. “Who are you talking to?”
“Some cryptic asshole with a disappearing act.” Dean pushed away his plate, disturbing the paper squares still arranged on the table. “So, it’s not a time loop, Sam. It’s definitely the Labyrinth but it’s got… dimensions and stuff. And you’re the key.”
Sam’s eyes widened and he pointed at his chest as if to say, Me?
“Yes, you. I’m the hero and you’re my love.” Dean leaned towards the table and flapped his hand, indicating that Sam should hurry up. “Time’s wasting, love. What’s in your pockets? You should have the string.”
Sam grumbled, “I’m the love? The girl? Who’s telling you this stuff?” But he patted the many pockets of his green jacket and emptied the contents onto the table. A tiny pencil, a map of IKEA, lint, receipts, change, a used toothpick.
“Dude, gross,” Dean admonished.
“None of this looks like string,” Sam said. “You’re sure it’s supposed to be on me?”
“He said.” Dean suddenly felt far from his body, imagining thousands more rounds, if Sam was somehow not his love. Imagined himself trapped in the Labyrinth, maybe ringing up endless meatballs in the cafeteria like Daedalus. “He said you had it.”
“Okay, Dean, calm down.” Sam put a hand on his arm over the table. Dean unclenched his hand, little crescents from his nails pressed into the skin of his palms. “I have one more thing.”
From his jeans, Sam pulled a metal tape measure.
A tape measure. A guide. Sam brought a guide.
“I figured we’d need it to get precise dimensions for all those weird nooks in the bunker,” Sam rushed to explain. “I don’t know if it’s—”
“Sam,” Dean breathed. “You genius, this is it. It’s my guide.” He picked it up and examined the rusted silver casing. It was dented, scraped, old. It had definitely seen better days, but it was the most beautiful thing Dean had seen in this maze of plastic and consumerism.
“So it’s not strictly string you need,” Sam clarified. “Only something that ‘guides.’”
Dean pulled the end out, extending the tape measure, and handed the metal bit at the end to Sam.
“Hold on to this for dear life.”
Startled by his dark tone, Sam gripped the end tight, nodding.
Dean turned his back and walked.
And walked.
He paused and turned back around. Sam watched from his seat in the cafeteria with his eyebrow raised, only a few yards away.
“So… did it work?”
Dean felt like his smile cut his head in half it was so wide. He had let Sam out of his sight yet he was still here. He shook his fists at the sky in triumph, gave Sam one last blinding smile, and ran into the Labyrinth.
The tape measure made snapping, cracking noises as it wove through the aisles. Dean walked and walked, not giving a damn that the soccer mom in skinny jeans gave him the stink eye when he moved past her. The tape was impossibly long, there’s no way enough was rolled up inside the shell to span the entire Labyrinth, but it just kept going and going and going…
Until he had nowhere else to go.
He approached the entrance. Looking to the side, he saw Sam in the near distance, still holding the end of the tape in the cafeteria, phone balanced in one hand as he tapped away, too distracted to notice Dean. Dean broke out into a relieved smile, scrubbing a hand down his face to hide the tears. They did it.
He was out.
Daedalus was nowhere to be seen while Sam paid for his furniture purchase inside and Dean waited by the Impala. Sam loaded the flat cardboard box in the back seat carefully, wary of Dean’s unstable attitude.
“I hope your fucking…”
“It’s called Läck .”
“Whatever, I hope your fucking coffee table was worth it, Sam.”
“Maybe it was, jerk.”
“Bitch.”
Sam rolled his eyes and closed the back door of the Impala, box safely inside. “Let’s get out of this place. I wasn’t in it for a thousand rounds and I still feel like I’ve been here too long.”
Dean caught Sam on his way to the passenger side in a tight hug. Sam froze up but Dean just held on harder. They had their ups and downs, but when it came down to it, they were brothers, damn everything else.
When Sam gave him a few pats on the back, Dean released him with a wordless grumble. Sam was smiling like a dork. The engine roared to life beneath him and he didn’t waste a second getting out of the parking lot.
“I never want to see a meatball again.”