Staring Into The Sun 2/6
Waking is always slow, painful degrees, stirring fitfully as he shivers awake and blinks groggily at the dust and sand.
“Wha'fuck?” he coughs, twisting at his arm and retching at the pain, scrabbling to find his balance again until he can lever himself up against the wall, clinging to it as he spits thin strings of bile and ducks his head to wipe his mouth on his good shoulder. His lips, dry and scabbed, crack open again, spill blood over his chin and he licks at it, grimacing in disgust, swallowing thickly.
He blinks, scrubs at his swollen eye, squints at the shadows of the cliff, the distinct dog-leg that marks the top of the crevice he's trapped in. It's almost touching the bottom of the crack; a crude marker but effective. He digs in the bag slung across his chest, pulls out the stub of chalk and his hand shakes as he scratches another mark on the rock by his shoulder, a thin, wavering trail of white against the darker bands of muted color. Soon, when the sun begins to fall, they'll turn bright and vivid, bloody hued with the sunset light but now they're dulled, stripes of red-hued gray broken only by four streaks of blurred white.
He drops the chalk back into the bag, carefully, fingers brushing over the smooth curve of the bottle and he snatches them away, shakes his head.
“Not yet,” he mutters hoarsely. “Gotta... gotta stick t'the schedule.”
Still, he can't help but imagine the cool rush of water over his tongue, sliding quick and easy down his parched throat, ice clinking against his teeth. He smiles a little, gulps at the glass, swallows empty air that tastes of the night and sand and nothing else.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Keep it together, Dean. C'mon.”
He tilts his head back, peers along the top of the cliff. The sky is impossibly blue, so vivid it almost hurts to look at and his eye stings but it doesn't tear, burns dry and sore and he blinks hard, eyelids scratching, lashes clumped together by salt.
The ragged sound of his voice is all he has and he mutters constantly, a rough scrape of sound as he shuffles the bag around to hang against his back, curls the fingers of his left hand around the butt of the pistol tucked into the crack that's his prison. Drawing the gun he hefts it, familiar weight in his hand, cooled by the shade within the rock.
The edges of the crevice are chipped and battered, the barrel of the gun scratched deeply and it draws a thin bead of blood from the the puffy, dark skin around his shoulder as he works the muzzle into the rock. Before long, the metal will be too hot to touch again, the heat baking off the cliff leaving him drained and enervated, barely able to do more than stand there, head down, and choke on air thick as tar.
He works feverishly, suddenly desperate, driving the muzzle of the gun deep into the crack, slamming the heel of his free hand against the grip until it won't move any further. He tries to wiggle the fingers of his right hand, thinks maybe he feels them touch smooth metal but he can't tell through the numb tingling in his trapped arm if it's real or wishful thinking.
He's grown used to the emptiness out here, where there's nothing but himself and the charred bones, the rocks and the sun, so when something shifts in the corner of his vision he flinches, spins as far as he can and glares out across the desolate plain.
There's nothing there but sand and dust, lifting on the scant breeze and his shoulders drop as he swears quietly to himself. He starts to turn back to the rock but something catches his attention again, a shape, dark against the light. He freezes, watches it grow slowly until it turns into a figure, stick thin, walking towards him across the water of the mirage and he doesn't want to hope, doesn't want to believe that it's real but he can't stop his cracked lips shaping a name, “Sammy?”
He knows, as soon as he says it, that he's wrong. The figure's too broad, tall and powerful where his brother's long and lean but he knows it just as well, feels his heart turn hard as the rock that's swallowed his arm and shakes his head.
“No. Not real, you. You're...” gone. Burning, he thinks, black humor creeping in behind the ache that hasn't dulled yet. I know how it feels.
It hurts, almost enough to drown out the steady, pounding beat of pain from his shoulder and dislocated hip but he turns away, ignores the voice that calls to him on the hot wind that blows fitfully every afternoon.
Dean, please. Son.
Part Three