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“Eighteen,” Sam whisper-mumbles, his voice low and hoarse and wrecked from the hours, days, of incessant murmuring. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… there’s eighteen. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The cat ate the mouse and the mouse ate the cheese…
“The cat smiles and the mouse bleeds. Eighteen. Forty’s the number of infinity. Nothing adds up…
“Everything bleeds. Ripped up to shreds and the light’s too red. Make it stop…
“Tick tock. Time’s up. The mice run up the clock. The clock strikes nine and bleeds…”
Dean takes a shuddering breath that borders on a sob and paces back to the wall nearest Sam’s bed. Eighteen steps. He drops wearily into the chair pulled up close to Sam’s side and smoothes the IV tubing that doesn’t need smoothing, careful not to snag the tape holding the needle into the inside of Sam’s forearm. Sam’s curled on his side, unrestrained, arms up by his face, hands clawed-in slightly; the same position he’s been in for the past couple of hours. He doesn’t move and a pulse flutters in his throat. The skin there is pale and translucent, blue veins twisting just beneath the tissue like vines. Sam’s chalky, sick looking, and Dean wants nothing more than to load him up into the Impala — the fact it’s a wreck and isn’t even functional be damned — and to just go. To drive them far away from here and put Sioux Falls General in the rearview mirror.
He forces himself to stay.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean keeps his voice low, soothing, matching Sam’s tone. He wants to tell Sam to shut up, to snap out of it, to come back. Instead, he gently pushes the button at the head of the bed, inclining it further in slow increments, raising Sam’s head a bit more.
Sam doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t blink. His eyes are heavy lidded, as though he’s about to fall asleep. He’s still talking, his voice scratchy and painful-sounding, and his pacing picks up, faster and more frantic, “…The cat eats the mouse and the mouse eats the cheese and it never ends. The light’s too red, tick tock…”
Dean tries not to think too hard about the images, the implications of Sam’s words. Alastair and his blade and
Sam’s voice slows again. “…Everything’s ripped into shreds and the intestines spill out like endless rain…”
Dean feels his stomach clench unpleasantly.
“….It’s eleven. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Eighteen. Jack and Jill went up the hill. Humpty Dumpty fell. Nothing adds up…”
Dean swallows, reaches for the wheeled tray besides the bed, and tugs it closer. He pours some ice water, long since turned lukewarm, into the plastic cup. Sam’s still babbling in that low, broken voice, rambling unceasingly.
“…The light’s red and round and round it goes — the cat, the mouse, the cheese. The cheese stands alone…”
Dean pokes the bent straw between dry, chapped, still-moving lips. He tries not to think about what it means that he can get it in Sam’s mouth on the first try, six weeks since Sam’s woken up, seven-and-a-half since he passed out in that warehouse when he’d stabbed Cas. Dean pushes Cas and the Leviathans and the laboratory out of his mind as Sam’s lips close around the plastic. Sam quiets for the first time in over an hour, his sucking and swallowing reflexes taking over. When the cup’s finished, Dean withdraws and a stream of water flows from the corner of Sam’s mouth, spilling down his chin and soaking his pillowcase as he starts up again. A split in the center of his lower lip begins to bleed sluggishly.
“…Not real. Nothing’s real. Hotel California. Nothing adds up. Everything’s wrong. Forty’s the number…”
“Dean?” a soft voice, female, sane, interrupts Sam. Dean startles slightly at the intrusion and comes face to face with Bridget, the night nurse. She’s pretty — small but broad-hipped, curly blonde hair that constantly seems to be trying to escape her bun, and big hands that are used to manhandling patients and wielding bedpans. Dean thinks maybe Sam would’ve liked her once. That he himself would’ve tried to get her between his bedsheets at some dive way back when.
Now, he blinks exhaustedly at her, dazed and drained. Too old, too tired. Between him and Sam, they’ve logged more than two centuries of too much pain and not enough fucking peace on earth.
“Visiting hours are over,” she tells him, her brown eyes soft and warm and he catches a flash of lust for a scant heartbeat. For a moment he feels thirty-two.
“You’ll…”
“I’ll keep an eye on Sam.” Her words have the comfortable, reassuring feel of old sneakers, worn down by routine. “And we’ll call if anything happens. Get some sleep. You look like you need it.” She leans over Sam and gently rolls him onto his back with expert hands. Sam ceases his mumbling as she rearranges his limbs, as limp and floppy as a rejected charity bin rag doll, but he starts up again when she withdraws her hands and he settles in the new position.
Dean nods and rises to his feet. He pats Sam on the knee. “’Night, Sam. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
Bobby’s barely thrown the old Ford into park when Dean’s out of the car, bolting into the house, stumbling over the threshold, his own feet.
He crashes to his knees just as he hears the creaky screen door slam shut and he’s scarcely got the cover of the toilet up before the first wave of vomit is rushing out of his mouth. He heaves and gags helplessly…
Red. Intestines. The cat eats the mouse. Eighteen. Jack and Jill. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…
…and pukes his guts out.
He hears Bobby come into the house, the soft clomping of boots over worn floors gradually growing louder. He registers a hand on his shoulder, feels the sturdy presence of the older man beside him as he throws up. There’s a firm, reassuring squeeze and a soft clap and then he’s alone again, even though he can hear Bobby moving in the kitchen — opening and closing cupboards, the faucet turning on and off. He’s grateful Bobby doesn’t ask questions anymore, that he doesn’t need to relive his entire day.
He retches several more times, bringing up nothing but air and bile, having eaten next to nothing all day, and flushes. He slumps, resting his sweaty forehead against the cool porcelain, taking several deep, shuddering breaths, shoring up his defenses, before going back out.
Later, sitting on the front porch in the balmy late-June night, he steadily drinks his way through a fifth of Jack.
Weeks, months, pass and Sam doesn’t get better.
He doesn’t get worse either.
Cas doesn’t answer his shouts, pleas. Hasn’t since that night when he took the Leviathans into his vessel.
Dean stops watching the news, tells himself he doesn’t care, that they’ve given enough.
That it’s someone else’s problem.
Sam’s quiet — or at least as quiet as he ever gets these days — and docile as Dean gently sits him upright and eases out the IV, pressing and taping down a bit of gauze over the spot, and disconnects the nasogastric tube from the pump. He remains sitting even when Dean lets go, more pliable and balanced than the GI Joes they used to play with, but just as lifeless. He murmurs as Dean positions himself at his side, a broken litany of don’t and stop and please mixed in the usual ramblings of blood and red and, always, always, the fucked up, bastardized cat mouse cheese rhyme.
With a soft grunt, they’re both standing and Dean pivots, hauling Sam with him. Sam’s too thin, too light and it scares him how easily he can bear Sam’s weight without breaking a sweat. Nineteen weeks of inertia and intravenous fluids have taken their toll; Sam’s whittled down to almost nothing, now, all sharp angles and bones, skin slack and loose over atrophied muscles.
He’s surprised to see Bridget standing behind the borrowed wheelchair, her hands on the cracked plastic handles, several sheets of papers clenched in one hand. Her scrubs have bright neon-colored cartoon spiders on them. Halloween, Dean registers dully. It’s October, now.
“Going somewhere?” she says softly, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m taking him home.” His voice is sharper than he’d intended as he grips Sam more tightly to his side and shifts his center of balance so he can lower Sam into the chair.
“Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty…” Sam rasps brokenly, his voice all but gone as Dean drops to one knee and lifts Sam’s feet into the rests. He rises to his feet.
Bridget doesn’t say anything, releasing the handles of the wheelchair, stepping aside so Dean can take her place. “Dean…”
“Don’t.”
“…The dish and the spoon ran and ran and tumbled down the hill and shattered and broke their crown…”
She shakes her head, moistens her lips with her tongue. “You misunderstand me. I’m letting you go. I’m not going to stop you.”
Dean halts in his motions, hand still on the brake.
“And all the king’s men and all the king’s horses…”
“I know they told you that there’s not much hope for Sam. That there isn’t much more that can be done but he isn’t fit for release…” She takes a quick, sharp breath. “I… just…” She swallows, composes herself, dragging her professional mask back on. She hands him the papers and Dean passes a cursory glance. AMA forms.
“I’m not going to give you the speech but I won’t lose my job over this either,” she adds softly, a pen materializing in her hand. “I’d do the same if I was you.”
Dean takes them from her and, using his thigh as a surface, scrawls his signature, too big and uneven, the pen tearing through the paper, across the bottom line: D. Winchester. It’s still weird to not have an alias but they’re done hiding. Everything’s been called off. He hands the sheaf back to her and unlocks the wheelchair.
“Good luck.” Her eyes are big and sad and watery as they meet his in the second before she turns on her heel and leaves the room without a backward glance.
They set Sam up on the cot in the library, the one Bobby’d used when he was paralyzed, and Dean makes up a bed for himself with an old mattress and ragged wool blankets on the floor. The medical equipment Bobby’d pilfered from somewhere, acquired through vague connections Dean doesn’t ask about, is there too. Dean hooks the IVs into his brother and settles him on his side. Sam’s drowsy, worn out by the short trip.
At first, it’s better. A little, at least. Sam’s still catatonic, still botches nursery rhymes in his wrecked voice, mumbling incessantly, but somehow he seems more alert. His eyes track Dean and Bobby in their comings and goings and while he doesn’t — can’t — move on his own, Dean’s sure he’s calmer.
Dean stays in the library most of the time, only leaving to shower, relieve himself, or to grab something to eat from the kitchen. He talks to fill up the space between them as he checks Sam’s catheter, emptying out the bags of urine, and examines his brother’s ass for bedsores and messes. He sits Sam up, propping his ginormous brother against him as he fills the syringe with Ensure and spends twenty minutes feeding it through the tube threaded through Sam’s nose.
One day he’s struck with an inspiration and climbs into Bobby’s attic. There, he finds old books, left behind by him and Sam over the years. There are a few romances mixed in the science fiction.
He brings down a paperback copy of C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet and settles on the floor, his back resting against the cot. The book is old, with 1960s lettering and a retro cover straight from the seventies. The pages are yellow, the stiff, mint-condition binding crackles in his hands as he bends it back, creasing it. He thinks he remembers Sam starting to read it one summer but abandoning it when Dad came back. He doesn’t remember if Sam’s ever finished it. Judging from the blurb it’s not really his thing, neither are the Jules Verne and Robert Lewis Stevenson he’s found. It sounds like something Sam’d have liked and that’s enough. He clears his throat and begins reading out loud, starting at the beginning, his voice slipping into a softer, slower register.
The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road…
Sam stills when Dean reads. He doesn’t babble as much and he seems more relaxed, focused.
Dean reads until his voice gives out.
Over the course of days, weeks, they make their way through The Space Trilogy and they are halfway through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when things go to shit.
It happens in the middle of the night. Sam whimpers and Dean’s instantly alert. The cry is a different quality from his tormented whines — it’s more insistent, filled with pain. Sam moans again and Dean goes to him.
“Hey,” he whispers softly. “What’s wrong?” He notices Sam’s blankets are drenched and groans inwardly at the sick stench rising from them. “Ugh,” he says softly. Urinary Tract Infection. “Again?” He winces. This makes the third infection this month. He guesses Sam’s probably chronically infected by now but it still doesn’t make the flare-ups any more fun. He eases out the tubing from his brother’s dick as carefully as he can. Sam grunts unhappily as it comes free. “Yeah, sucks, I know,” a pause. “Sorry. We’re done with these, okay?” He cleans Sam, washing his ass and checking for bedsores. There’s a new one on his buttock, small and round and rough and irritated. He smears ointment over it and rips open the package of diapers. He slides one of them beneath his brother and fastens it. Expertly, he rolls Sam onto his side, pulling out the soiled sheets, discarding them on the floor, and covers him with his own blankets.
“You good?” he asks softly.
“Make it stop.”
Sam grows more confused as the day goes on, his raw, breathless whisper growing more frenetic. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen… there’s eighteen. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The cat ate the mouse and the mouse ate the cheese… The cat smiles and the mouse bleeds. Eighteen. Forty’s the number of infinity. Nothing adds up… Everything bleeds. Ripped up to shreds and the light’s too red. Make it stop… Tick tock. Time’s up. The mice run up the clock. The clock strikes nine and bleeds…”
Dean tunes it out as he switches out diapers and injects antibiotics into Sam’s IV. Sam’s arm is too thin, all pale, transparent skin stretched over bone and atrophied muscle and he thinks that maybe there’s the beginning of a bruise at the site of the needle but he isn’t sure. He apologizes softly when he thinks he sees Sam’s eyelids twitch.
Sam meets his eyes. There’s borderline lucidity there and Dean’s breath catches. Sam’s too-dry lips crack open and blood wells up sluggishly. “Not real. Nothing’s real. Hotel California.”
Dean flinches.
Sam’s lips pull back slightly into a rictus of a smile. “We can’t leave. Forty’s the number of infinity. Jack and Jill had a great fall…” a hitch of air. “The cheese stands alone.” He exhales. “Can’t let go. Can’t find the catch. Too much red. Ripped to shreds.”
“How’s he doin’?” Bobby asks as he steps into the room, his boots clunking quietly. Dean glances up and sees the older man standing in the doorway, watching them. He’s got a china plate with a sandwich cut into quarters in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. Dean wants to make a quip about being seven again but he’s too drained to think of anything sarcastic. A soft moan from Sam’s throat turns his attention back to his brother. He gently lowers Sam’s shoulders back onto the pillows and wordlessly rearranges his brother’s limbs into a new position. He pulls up the blanket, pats Sam on the chest. Sam’s on his back and he looks raw, exposed, vulnerable, as he stares blankly up at the ceiling, his lips dry and cracked. He murmurs without sound and shuts his eyes.
“The same,” Dean says finally, straightening up and feeling his spine crack as he stretches. He slumps, doesn’t meet Bobby’s gaze.
Bobby closes the gap between them, setting the sandwich and milk on the TV tray set up by Sam’s cot. He watches Sam for a moment, frowning as Sam’s face twitches, screwing up a little as though he’s in pain, and a soft mumble that might be the mouse bleeds escapes him. He exhales sharply. “Sam wouldn’t want this,” he says finally. “This isn’t living…”
“Get out, Bobby.”
“… You’ve got him in diapers, he’s got an IV in him twenty-four-seven… He’s barely there….” A breath. “He’s down to reflexes, Dean. He’s wasting away… I’m just sayin’…”
“I said. Get. Out.” Dean doesn’t meet Bobby’s gaze, balling his hands into fists at his sides. He clenches his jaw, closing his eyes, keeping his face averted. He hears Bobby exhale softly and depart. A moment later, the screen door crashes into its frame.
“Hurts…” Sam mouths. “Stop. Please.” His eyes sweep the room, staring and unseeing. They seem to latch onto his brother, seem to focus. It’s been happening more lately — Dean suspects it’s the pain — and they’re, as always, desperate and lost. “The mouse dies. Everything bleeds. Can’t find the catch.” His tongue slips out and Dean dabs a wet sponge against it. “Not here. Hotel California. Let me out…” A tear slides down Sam’s cheek. His eyes are blank again. “Eighteen. Forty. Round and round it goes. It never stops.” A breath. “Make it stop.”
Dean leans closer to Sam. “Okay,” he says, speaking over Sam’s cat-mouse-cheese gibberish. “Okay. We’ll make it stop. I’m gonna get you out.” He feels something surge, hot and foul tasting, into the back of his mouth and bolts from the room.
Dean slams the bathroom door behind him and slumps over the sink, gripping the hard porcelain sides in support, gasping. He closes his eyes and blows out a slow, steadying breath as the urge to puke subsides. He takes a deliberate breath, drawing from his diaphragm the way Lisa taught him that year. There’s no more options. If you can’t save your brother, you’re gonna have to kill him, his father’s voice says in his head, an echo of his final words.
He glances up at his reflection in the mirror. He looks like crap — pale, exhausted with deep rings of purple under his eyes, a week’s worth of growth on his face. He curls his hands into fists and, with a raw cry of frustration and bottled pain, lets his right hook fly and smashes the center of the mirror. Triangular shards of glass explode around him. He steps back, crushing silver pieces beneath his heels. He remembers that time in the antique store or whatever the fuck it was with all the mirrors, ages ago, when he and Sam first started hunting together and how they’d joked about how they’d probably have about two hundred years of bad luck. What’s seven more? Dean thinks as he grinds his foot into the mess.
The knuckles of his right hand are bleeding, cut up by his act of violence, but he doesn’t feel it. Not really. He carefully, calmly, picks the largest pieces out of the sink and stacks them on the top of the toilet tank, beside the pink Kleenex box. He’ll throw them away later. He turns on the taps and holds his bloody hand under the water. The blood washes away and the tiny cuts sting. When he shuts off the faucet, blood wells up again. Once, Sam would’ve crowded into his space, snapping what the fuck did you do, Dean? while pulling out the peroxide and gauze and double-checking to make sure there was no more glass embedded in his knuckles.
As it is, Dean tears a long strip from the hem of his shirt and winds it sloppily around his hand. He’ll deal with it later. First he’s got a brother with a shattered soul to look after.
He remembers dying and getting Death to put Sam’s soul back and Death’s words about do not fuck with the natural fucking order, or something to that effect, at least, and being Death for a day… Dean swallows convulsively. He’s the reason Sam’s in this shit… if he hadn’t been so fucking selfish, Sam would still be alive and mostly okay. Soulless, but here. He’d take soulless over this.
His eyes fall on the stacked pile of broken mirrored glass. He picks up a shard and traces the razor-sharp edge against the inside of his forearm. He pauses, an idea forming. He passes it across his forearm again, this time slicing deeply, making sure not to nick anything vital. As blood pours down his limb in rivulets, running off his wrist, hand, to splashing on the yellowed, warped linoleum, Dean drops the piece and begins clenching and unclenching his hand deliberately.
Dean’s sitting on the floor, half slumped against the wall, when Death appears beside him. The Horseman squats, holding a hot dog, liberally topped with chopped onion and every possible condiment, in one hand, a large paper cup of soda in the other. He slurps loudly, the straw scratching against the bottom of the cup.
“You called?”
Dean blinks up at him, dizzy and nauseous from blood loss. “Death?”
“I take it you need something.”
Dean nods. “We only got a couple minutes before Bobby finds me and saves my ass,” he takes a breath. “I know I’m not your favorite person and I deserve it. But Sam doesn’t.” He presses his lips together tightly, swallowing tears.
“You’re asking me to reap Sam’s soul?” Death takes a bite out of his hot dog.
“You were right. His soul is broken. Sam…” Dean looks up at the horseman, voice cracking. “Sam’s hurt and it’s my fault.” He licks his lips. “I just w-wanted…”
Death sets the paper cup down beside him. “I will collect Sam,” he says deliberately. “On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You don’t take your own life after.” Death smiles. “I will come for you. Wait for me.” He rises to his feet. “Oh, and use the Colt. A broken soul isn’t so easily destroyed.”
Dean steps out into the bright sunlight of the salvage yard. It is unusually warm for early February. In another twelve weeks or so it’ll be a year since Sam went all One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. It feels like a hundred. Dean senses Bobby watching him as he reaches out and palms one of the wrecks, leaving behind a clear streak. He looks up and feels as empty and gutted as any of the dead metal carcasses strewn around the yard.
“I’m gonna do it,” he sniffs hard, wipes his nose on the pristine white pressure bandage wrapped around his forearm and readjusts his grip on his opposite shoulder, keeping the wound elevated. “Sam… Sam wouldn’t want to live like this.”
Bobby doesn’t say anything.
He takes another breath. “I…” He clamps his lips together, ducking his head as he works his jaw, shutting his eyes against the world. “C-could you build the pyre? I…” He swallows convulsively, unable to get the rest of it out.
There’s a long pause and then:
“I got it. You go be with Sam.”
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November…” Sam mutters feverishly, his voice totally gone, the sound a rough exhale of air.
“Hey,” Dean interrupts sharply. He doesn’t need to hear the rest of it. Doesn’t want to listen to mangled nursery rhymes about gunpowder and treason or half-lucid shit like blondes bursting into flames on bedroom ceilings. He gently manhandles Sam upright, all floppy, bony deadweight and wedges himself behind his brother, using his shoulder as a support. Sam’s too light, too easy, these days. He can feel the knobs of Sam’s spine digging into his arm as he pushes the straw into Sam’s mouth. “You’re getting all dehydrated again. You gotta drink.” He’s thankful his voice comes out steady, without the faintest hint of a wobble.
Outside, he can hear the muffled sounds of Bobby working in the yard.
Glancing down, he sees Sam’s drunk most of the water, although he knows it’s not Sam as much as the automatic reflexes taking over. Sam’s eyes are heavy, half-lidded, and he knows the dozen or so sleeping pills he’s crushed up and dissolved are already beginning to take effect.
Carefully, gently, Dean eases Sam down on the bed, laying him on his left side, facing the wall, arranging too-long, wasted limbs into a position that at least looks comfortable.
Sam’s quiet, his breathing slow and even, and it feels like before. Swallowing hard and clenching his jaw, Dean waits until Sam’s breaths are even slower, the pauses between them longer. Sliding off the mattress, Dean reaches down and picks up the Colt from beneath the cot. The gun that can kill anything. He’d cleaned it last night, polishing it until the nickel-plating shines. It’s in mint condition and he knows it won’t jam, not after the oiling he’d given it. He braces his knee on the bed, left hand gripping Sam’s right shoulder, and presses the muzzle of the Colt gently against the hollow at the base of his brother’s skull, where it meets the spinal cord. It’s uncomfortable and awkward with his arms crossed like this but he’s made worse shots before.
He closes his eyes, tears and snot flowing freely, takes one last breath
And fires.
When Bobby comes in, padding on silent, hunter-stealth feet, Dean’s kneeling on the floor, sitting on his heels, a pile of tubes beside him, silent tears streaming through the blood and ichor drying on his face. His clothes and hands are saturated; his forearms stained a deep dark red.
Sam’s body is wrapped in clean sheets from the top of his head to his knees and he’s wearing jeans for the first time since the showdown with Cas. There are white socks on Sam’s feet, covered in bloody fingerprints, and one of them has a fraying hole in the heel.
Bobby opens his mouth but Dean looks down at the sasquatch-sized boot in his hands. “I can’t get his shoes on, Bobby.” His voice breaks on the second syllable in a soft sob. “Dad always told us to wear our shoes.”
Slowly, unsteadily, Bobby kneels besides Dean and takes the boot from him. He loosens all the laces and pulls out the tongue as far as it can go and hands it back to Dean. He holds Sam’s foot, not quite stiff with rigor mortis yet, and Dean slowly works the shoe on. In silence they get the second boot on Sam’s other foot and Bobby rises, knees creaking audibly as Dean tightens the laces back up and ties a knot.
He takes the two ends and loops each of them, then crosses them and slips one of the loops around the other and pulls the knot tight. It’s comes out slightly crooked and tears blind him as he repeats the motion with the other shoe, remembering a time almost thirty — seventy — years ago when he did this for a too-serious, floppy-haired toddler and then, later, teaching him, and, later still, practicing their knots during endless car rides.
“Christ, Sam,” Dean mutters softly, picking up another sheet and winding it around Sam’s legs, tucking in the ends at Sam’s feet into a neat bundle. “Why did you have to grow so damn big? It was so much easier then.”
The sheet at Sam’s head is soaked bright red but he doesn’t pay it any notice as he hefts Sam’s deadweight into his arms, remembering the last time a blanket-swaddled bundle was pushed into his arms. His arms are still too short for the job but he manages, balancing Sam’s wasted form, not registering how light his brother is despite his length, feeling the weight of Sam’s head loll against his shoulder. He silently makes his way through the house and waits for Bobby to open the front door.
Then there’s the yard, all cracked, parched, half-frozen dirt, a wasteland — playground — of broken, twisted metal. He crosses the infinite space until; finally, he reaches the raised platform of wood — serviceable, hastily erected. He lays the bundle down on the pyre, straightens it out, and steps back.
Bobby holds out the small book of matches — the cardboard stamped with an unidentifiable blue motel logo, faded past the point of recognition — and Dean shakes his head silently, lips clamped shut, eyes trained on his own shoes, laces tied in knots that would have made his father proud, not the straggling half-bows he knows that are underneath the shroud.
He hears swiping of cardboard on cardboard, the hiss as the phosphate ignites, the flames flying in a low arc to land among the kindling.
“Requiescat in pace, Sam,” Bobby chokes out.
Later, after a shower that doesn’t get the blood from his nail beds and a fresh change of clothes, Dean barely picks at the chili Bobby made for him, hot and spicy the way he likes it, and doesn’t touch the warmed-up Entenmann’s pie cooling on the counter. With a mumbled apology, he stumbles up the stairs to the bedroom he and Sam’d shared, once. Back then. He bypasses the bed closer to the door, the one with the faded yard-sale KISS poster with the torn-off lower left corner over its head, and lays down on the one by the window, beneath the Periodic Table of Elements, and hears, feels, a harsh animal sound rip from his throat.
He cries himself to sleep.
When he wakes up, daylight is streaming through the curtains and he’s under the covers, stripped down to his boxer shorts and t-shirt. There’s a glass of water on the bedside table between the beds. He doesn’t touch it. He feels empty and numb as he gazes blankly at the Periodic Table poster.
He starts with Hydrogen. The most basic of all elements, Sam’s little-kid voice says in his head.
Later, Bobby comes in, first with gentle, gruff words, and then, later still, once, slaps him across the cheek, hard, stinging, and sharp. “You don’t get to zone out, boy,” he growls.
Dean shrugs, the flesh across his jaw burning hot, and goes back to staring at the atomic number for Radium.
Bobby returns, offering a roast beef sandwich, which Dean nibbles dutifully when he sees the raw pain and grief in the older man’s eyes.
When Bobby leaves, he lies back down, skips to the Noble Gases, and drifts under again.
Once, Bobby drags him outside into bright noonday sunshine. It’s warm. March, he thinks. But he isn’t sure. It could still be February. He goes through the motions, attempting to repair some of the cars, relying on muscle memory, not paying attention or even really trying. When he accidentally cuts the gas line, Bobby lets him go back into the house.
Bobby eventually gets the memo and stops interfering, stops bullying, but Dean can still feel his presence in the doorway. He can still feel the older man’s grief but he’s powerless to do anything to assuage it. He wants to tell Bobby he’s sorry, he’s so, so fucking sorry, and he wishes there didn’t have to be collateral damage.
Somewhere around Sulfur, he wants to tell Famine that the Horseman was right.
And he waits for Death.
Time runs together. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink. Doesn’t even bother memorizing the elements anymore. He drifts more now, feels his body locking on itself. Was this how it was for Sam? He figures he’s breaking his promise to Death but he can’t bring himself to care as sleep reclaims him.
A hand on his shoulder gently brings him to sluggish awareness and there’s a small girl with dark, chin-length hair backlit by the bedside light. She’s dressed in jeans and a black tank top.
“Tessa?” he croaks out, his voice raw and scratchy from days of disuse.
“Hello, Dean,” she says softly. “You ready?”
“s’time?”
Tessa nods, her expression serious, dark eyes sad. She holds out her hand. “C’mon. It’s your turn.”
Dean sits up slowly, dizzy and weak from the lack of fuel in his system. “Did Sam…”
“Sam made it. He’s fine.”
A smile stretches Dean’s mouth for the scantest of seconds.
“What if….”
Tessa sits on the edge of the twin bed besides him, as though she knows this could take a while. She reaches out, cups the back of Dean’s neck with one hand and strokes the hair at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t look at her and he’s grateful she doesn’t force eye contact.
“I’ve told you, Dean, you can’t keep white-knuckling. Everything dies. Everyone leaves somebody behind. It’s part of the natural order.”
Dean turns and meets her eyes and she doesn’t remove her hand from the back of his neck. “But…”
Tessa smiles sadly, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards. “You’ve always made it interesting.”
“What about Bobby?”
She slides her hand to his cheek and cups it. “Everybody leaves somebody behind,” she repeats and Dean closes his eyes, swallowing convulsively. He opens them again.
“I never wanted to hurt him,” Dean whispers. “I shouldn’t’ve…”
“Do you remember what I told you when we first met? How I’ve taken men from the battlefield before? How they all don’t want to go? How they need to live this one more fight? To see it to the end?”
Dean nods slowly and feels a tear slip down his face.
“It’s the same thing,” She sighs softly, swipes her thumb gently under his eye, catching the second tear before it can really escape. “It’s part of the natural order. People are born… they live… they die. You’ve used up your chances. You can stay, but you’ll become the thing you hunted, I guarantee you.”
“Will Bobby be okay?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see into the future, Dean. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I don’t know what comes after. I’m a Reaper. I collect souls and I make sure they get to where they need to go. That is all. But I do know everyone leaves behind someone. No one ever truly dies alone.”
Dean lets out a choked breath. “Yeah. Okay.” He ducks his head for a moment before looking up at her again. “I’ll go.”
“So you’ve finally given in to the natural order,” Death says dryly, leaning against the fake-wood paneling. “Well done.” He lifts a hamburger to his lips.
There’s nothing but darkness and Dean’s a bit unnerved that he can’t see or feel any of the floors or walls even though he’s certain he’s walking on something. They walk for a while until they get to a closed door, bright light leaking around the edges.
“Is this it? Is this where Sam went through?”
“I don’t know. It all looks the same from this side. I can’t go with you. You go on alone from here.” Tessa’s voice is sad, laced with tears. She suddenly stands on her toes and wraps her arms around his shoulders in a spontaneous hug, squeezes, and lets go, pulling away before he can figure out what to do with his hands. “Good luck. This is your kindergarten.” The corner of her mouth quirks and then he’s alone.
He reaches out and closes his hand around the doorknob.
Sam shifts, feels the cool plane of metal and glass beneath his back, a comfortable seat. He holds a can of beer in one hand, balancing it on his abdomen, but he doesn’t drink from it, looking up at the inky sky above him. He’s been here for a while and he isn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. It’s nice here. It’s quiet and peaceful and green; nothing at all like it was before.
There’s no pain, here, and he feels whole in a way he hadn’t for a long time. Since before Cold Oak, if he’s honest. There’s no fire and he doesn’t feel like he’s burning, tearing apart from the inside out. There’s a warm breeze, and he smiles, taking pleasure in it. The stars are different, here, but the constellations are the same. He looks for The Hunter, and finds Orion by the three bright stars that make up its belt.
He hears Ellen yelling for him in the distance, telling him that supper’s ready and to come and get it. It’s their routine, these days, although time is different here — it seems to exist all at once or not at all… there is nothing to mark its passage and there is only the sensation of being. Of finally standing still. “I’m waiting for Dean,” he calls back and grins. He knows Ellen’s bored, that she needs something to do, someone else beside Jo and Ash to talk to and lavish tenderness on. But he won’t leave this spot until Dean comes, not wanting to chance his brother coming to an empty clearing. Not after everything.
He sits up, swings his too-long legs over the left fender of the car, bouncing his heels gently off the rubber tires of the Impala. At his feet is the small, battered, green-and-white cooler, perpetually full of beer bottles, no matter how many he takes out of it, and a cardboard box of fireworks. Most likely illegal.
There’s a split in the air, like a crack of heat lightning, and Sam twists.
“Dean!” He shouts, standing. He drops his beer can and he’s cut their distance in half before he hears the thud of aluminum on grass and the glugging of the beverage emptying out.
“Sam?” Dean’s voice is low, awed with surprise. “Sammy?” He barely gets the word out before Sam’s wrapping his arms around Dean. He pulls Dean close, resting his chin on his brother’s shoulder as he feels Dean’s hands reach around his torso and grip the back of his shirt tightly. He simultaneously hears Dean’s breath hitch and feels his brother bury his face into the worn fabric of his over shirt.
There’s another hitch, this time a sob, and then Dean’s crying, all harsh and loud and painful in a way Sam hadn’t heard, witnessed, since Dean’d admitted he stepped off the rack and tortured souls in Hell. Sam knows Dean must’ve wept like this after watching his little brother throw himself into the pit, but he hadn’t been there to see.
Sam shifts his grip, tightens his hold. In the brief half-second where his grip is loosened, he feels Dean’s hands claw even harder, more desperately, unwilling to relinquish it. And Sam feels the moment his brother’s core muscles and legs give out on him and he secures his grip, keeping Dean on his feet.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Dean mumbles wetly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I tried, Sammy. I tried so hard.”
“Shhh,” Sam shushes softly, less to stifle Dean’s sobs and more to offer his voice as a tether. “Shhh. It’s okay. It’s gonna be all right. I gotcha. I’m not going anywhere…” He’s aware that he’s feeding Dean the same lines he’s heard all his life, words that never failed to reassure him, but for the first time they are not a lie. “It’s okay. I gotcha.”
Dean shudders in his hold, still clinging to his shirt, weeping silently, and Sam waits. They have eternity for this. He knows Dean will stop crying sooner or later, that they’ll go to Ellen’s roadhouse for burgers and pie, but for now, this is enough.
Finally, Dean inhales and exhales shakily a few times and loosens his fists from Sam’s shirt, letting his hands fall to his sides. Sam waits a beat, until he’s sure his brother is steady on his feet, before releasing his own grip.
“You good?”
Dean sniffs hard, nods. “I’m so—”
“Don’t.” Sam shakes his head, cutting off Dean’s apology. “You have nothing to apologize for, Dean. You saved me. Shit, my soul was broken… there was nothing anyone could’ve done. I had to go… and I tried, fuck, I tried so hard, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let go. Not completely. You did that for me. You set me free. Don’t you get it?” Sam swallows hard. “Thank you.”
Dean’s eyes widen slightly in disbelief and he tenses slightly, as though bracing himself for a new one being torn into him. “Y-you mean it?”
Sam nods. “I couldn’t die, Dean. And, god, I wanted to.”
After a pause, Dean swallows convulsively. “D-did it hurt?”
Sam hesitates, remembering the sensations of being torn apart, of feeling as though he was still in the Cage as Lucifer’s plaything, then replies: “No. Dying didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel it.”
Dean exhales shakily, his lips stretching into a tight smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Good.” Then: “Baby!” His face breaks out into a spontaneous grin and he seems younger than Sam’s seen him look in a long time. He rushes over to his car and slides reverent hands across the smooth, pristine paintjob. When he glances up at Sam, his eyes are wet again. “She was totaled, Sammy… I didn’t fix her… Not after…”
Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that as he watches Dean circles the car. Dean finishes his inspection and takes stock of their surroundings; Sam can see the moment he figures out where they are.
“Sam…” He breathes. “This is my heaven. Where I… This is the field we… What are you doing here? I thought…” He bites his lower lip, clearly fighting tears.
Sam goes to him and grips both of Dean’s shoulders with his huge hands, making Dean look up, pinning him in place. He shakes his head deliberately as he lets go. “No. Those weren’t my happiest memories. I mean they were up there on my greatest hits, sure, but none of them are anywhere I’d pick to stay in for eternity. What you saw, Dean…” he swallows hard, clenches his jaw. “Was fucked up. They cherry-picked my memories, chose the ones they knew would hurt you the most…” He doesn’t say who they are and he knows he doesn’t have to judging by the flash in Dean’s eyes. “Yeah, I was happy to be on my own and to leave Dad behind, but it was never about you, Dean. Not really. Fuck, most of my happiest times were with my big brother and, yeah, when it comes to eternity, I’d take this burned-up field with you over Freshmen Orientation at Stanford any day.”
Dean lets out a shaky breath that borders on a sob. “Really?”
Sam nods.
Dean licks his lips and drops his gaze, not making eye contact. “Uh…” He exhales sharply. “D’you…” he looks up, staring out at a point in the vague middle distance. “Do we have beer?”
“Yeah, we do.” Sam grins. “That song lied.” He goes to the cooler and lifts the cover. He pulls out two bottles of El Sol and hands them to Dean, who pops the caps off with his ring. For the first time, Sam notices his brother is wearing his amulet. He smiles again, flashing his dimples, as he accepts the bottle back from Dean and takes a long swig. “What do you say we set off some fireworks?”