Alcohol and Blood Loss fic
I guess I should put trigger warnings for self-harm. Kind of, but not really. And spoilers up through Season 10. My take on what the Darkness could be. This is my first M rated fic mostly for the triggers, though it's not really that bad. Mostly drunken angst. Could just as easily be PG13 +++ Gen
Usual Disclaimers of non-ownership applies.
Alcohol and Blood Loss
The Darkness rode over the Impala, jostling the vehicle.Dean kept steady pressure on the gas, hoping the shaking from outside might somehow rock them out of the pothole and plunge them forward and out of the vaporous gray. It pressed against the windows like flattened curls of fog covering the glass. Their only light came from the instrument panel on the dashboard.
Dean met Sam’s worried gaze. Younger brother had one hand braced against the dashboard, his back pressed against the window, lips tight.
“Sam!” Dean cried out as a tendril snaked between the glass and top of the car behind Sam’s head. Sam jerked away from the ashy haze twining in the air. Several more tendrils got between the gaps above the window, and others smoked in through the vents. And hell, the odor. Decaying corpses doused in old lady perfume.
“Gah!” Sam cried out and clutched his head. “Dean!” His back arched, shoulders grinding against the seat as the coils of fog touched him.
Twisting in the seat, Dean grabbed Sam’s wrist. The kid’s arm was locked hard, muscles straining, hand practically knuckling into his temple. Horrified, Dean watched another vine of gray push through the driver side window and pass him by to go straight for his brother.
Sam cried out again. Dean snapped his attention to his brother’s face, heart pounding. Blood was dripping from Sam’s eyes, his nose. On a harsh shudder, Sam folded over, head scraping along the dashboard.
“Sam!” Dean held onto the back of his shoulders. He didn’t know what to do. All the curls of darkness that got in were arrowing straight toward his brother, leaving him completely alone. He didn’t know what to do. It was killing Sam. Why wasn’t it affecting him?
The Mark. Dean had been the key.
Was that it? He was untouchable, but his brother… Screw that. Dean’s foot left the gas pedal and he lunged across Sam, curling over him, a human shield against the Darkness. He didn’t know if it would work. If the cloud could get into the car, certainly it could get past him. He wasn’t near large enough to cover all of Sam, but he had to do something!
“Just hold on, just hold on.” Dean felt Sam panting beneath him. The tension in his back was incredible. Dean pressed himself into Sam harder, his cheek flat against the bumps of his sibling’s spine. Just holding on, riding it out.
It seemed to be working. Dean felt the coldness of the fog touch him and then retreat like a living aware thing that was wary of getting too close to him, even to go after Sam.
The strain in Sam’s muscles loosened even as the tremors in his limbs increased. Dean dared to lift his head, saw the last of the mist pull out of his car the same way it had gotten in, joining the rest of the rolling gray cloud as it washed across the windows and moved on, scouring the horizon behind them. And then it was gone.
And Sam was scrabbling for the door handle, toppling out of the car, and puking into the wind-scorned dirt.
Dean scrambled out and around the car. And stopped cold.
Sam wasn’t just vomiting. He was heaving out runny black goo, trembling and shaky, his sweaty hair falling around his face. Dean opened the trunk, grabbed a water bottle and crouched beside him, offering quiet support. He was a little shaky himself.
That stuff had gotten inside of Sam. His chest squeezed tighter at each pout of heaving. He tried to look anywhere but at the black mess, willing Sam to get it all out of him, and hating that he had to go through this.
Finally Sam pulled back, sitting dejectedly on his knees in the same position he had when Dean held Death’s scythe over him less than thirty minutes ago. Dean stared straight ahead, unable to look at him, on the threshold of emptying the contents of his own stomach.
“Here,” he croaked, holding the water bottle out sideways to Sam. Sam didn’t take it, didn’t stir.
Dean took a sidewise glance and swore. A line of blood trailed from beneath the long hair where Sam’s ear was hidden down his neck and along his clavicle. “The hell.” Dropping the water, he turned Sam’s face to him. Blood was everywhere. Coming from his ears, nostrils, his eyes. And still coming. No, actually those were tears, mixing in the blood coated on his face. Miniscule tremors punctuated each shallow wet breath. His bloodshot eyes were unfocused, wholly not there…and wrong.
A terrible unease kicked the inside of Dean’s gut with steel-toed delivery.
“Sam.” He took his brother by the upper arms and twisted his torso to look at him. “Sam!” He shook him. “Snap the hell out of it.” He shook him again, hard enough to wrench bones out of sockets. “Sam!”
That did it. On a loud inhale, Sam came back, his eyes widening in shock, and then his entire countenance crumpled. “No,” he wailed, thrashing out of Dean’s grip and crabbing backwards away from him. “No, get away. I saw-” he trembled on a breath. “I saw-”
“What?” Dean scrambled after him. “What did you see?”
Sam’s head yanked up, a devastation pulsing so clearly in his eyes it made Dean reel back. He’d never seen anything like it, not after the cage, not after being soulless, not after Jess’s death.
“The…the Darkness.” Sam began shaking so hard that his hands scratched zigzags in the dirt. “I saw…I saw…”
“Hey.” Dean inched closer. “Whatever you saw, it’s gone now. We’re okay.”
“But…”
“We’re okay. It can’t be any worse than anything we’ve already seen. And we dealt with those.”
Sam shook his head, his lips quivering, on the verge of losing it.
“You lasted through the cage. It can’t be worse than that.” He hated saying that, but he had to get Sam out of whatever this was now.
Sam’s eyes latched onto his. His entire body was trembling. “Worse. It’s worse, so much worse.” His chest rose and fell in hard gasps.
“Sam?”
He flung his hand out to stop Dean’s approach. “I did this I did this stay back get away from me I did this…”
“Sam, you got to calm down, bro. Just take it eas-shit.”
Sam’s rapid breathing finally stalled. His eyes rolled back in his head and he crumbled to the dirt.
~~~SPN~~~
Apparently he’d been out of it for two days. When Sam awoke in the bunker, it was to his brother’s worried unshaven features. They didn’t speak much. What was there to say? You killed Death. I let out the Darkness. Dean brought him up to speed. There were no off centered news reports of anything the Darkness might have tripped. Only one sighting of a dark rolling cloud from a farmer. No unusual deaths. So far the world destruction Death had foretold came to a big steaming pile of zilch. The world kept going on as it usually did.
They hoped the last horseman had simply been spewing an empty threat to manipulate them, but they would research the Darkness and keep their ears to the ground for anything that proved otherwise.
Maybe this was a win for them.
And pigs could fly.
At least no one had been killed by the Darkness.
Just in unleashing it. Sam’s fingers curled over the old tome he was reading, seeing Charlie’s shrouded form instead of the Sanskrit he was trying to translate. He reached for the Johnny Walker Black next to him and drained what little left was in the bottle, willing the smoky warmth to dull the ache in his heart.
It was funny. He usually didn’t bury himself in alcohol. That was Dean’s way, but Sam couldn’t seem to lift himself out of his funk without the constant buzz, while Dean right now was cold sober. At least he thought he was. He actually hadn’t gotten a close look to know. When Dean entered a room, Sam left. And when Sam was somewhere and Dean came upon him, he grabbed what he needed and walked out. Neither speaking or really taking a close look at each other. Dean could be on a bender of his own for all Sam knew. It had been going on like this for three days. Or four. Maybe five? Sam honestly didn’t know.
He closed the old tome and scooted the chair back. A wash of dizziness hit him when he stood and staggered away from the long table. The contents of his stomach sloshed and the dulling he craved felt more like nausea. It wasn’t working. He still felt…bad. He didn’t know why he couldn’t climb out of it and grasp onto the hope that they could fix it. The Mark was off Dean. They were alive. This was a win, right? Better than most wins they’d counted. He’d saved his brother for once. They had hope for the future. They still had hope, right? So why couldn’t he feel it?
Maybe he was making himself too sick to feel it. He needed to get some food into his sloshing stomach. He’d eaten. He knew better to drink on an empty stomach. He just couldn’t remember when the last time he ate was.
He drug himself into the kitchen, looking to see if Dean was in there. He hoped not. He wasn’t ready to face his brother, not yet.
Seeing that he was alone, Sam made it to the table and slouched into the chair. What had he come in here for? Oh right, food. Open beer cans and bottles of whiskey littered the counters and tables. It looked like someone had one hell of a party.
There was a wrapped loaf of bread beside the cutting board on the table. The kind Dean got from the local bakery that was fresh and unsliced. Sam unwrapped it. A third of the loaf was already gone. Dean must have been making himself sandwiches. There was a time when Dean would have made him a sandwich too. When Sam got into research mode, Dean always made sure he ate. He wouldn’t do that now, because now Dean wanted him dead, wanted him on a burning pyre in Charlie’s place. Wanted to slide Death’s scythe across his throat. He wondered if Dean had intended to put him on a pyre after that or if he and Death would have just vanished, leaving Sam’s corpse to rot on the dirty floor of that cantina.
Not that he didn’t deserve that. He did. He’d gotten Charlie killed. His fault. No one else’s. Just like always.
He’d gotten his mom killed too. Somehow the bread knife was in his hand. He carved a careful notch into the cutting board.
Then Jess. Another notch.
Dad. Then D-dean. He’d gotten Dean killed. Pamela. Three more notches.
Marshall Hall. Jim. Caleb. He cut into the wood gently for each one. The names kept coming. So many deaths on his hands.
Ash. Andy. Ava. Jo. Ellen. Amy. Bobby. His vision blurred behind a wet sheen, yet he kept slicing notches.
Adam. Kate. Rufus. Annie. Kevin. Sar-Sarah…
~~~SPN~~~
Dean’s eyes blurred. He couldn’t look at the computer screen any longer. Besides that, nothing was turning up. Perhaps they really had dodged a bullet this time. It didn’t match with their usual luck, but he’d take it for now. Regardless, he needed a break.
He avoided the library where Sam had been holed up most of the week. Brainiac had been quiet once he’d woken up. Too quiet, but Dean let him be. At least he hadn’t woken up shaking and wailing about the Darkness and it being his fault. Okay, yeah, a big part of it was Sam’s fault, but he didn’t know about the Mark being a key, and could Dean really say he wouldn’t have done the same?
But crying that he’d seen the Darkness and it was worse than the cage. Dean’s fists clenched. What could be worse than the cage? Standing over your kneeling brother ready to take his head off, that’s what. A tremor rolled through Dean’s core. No matter how hard he tried to scrub that image away, it stuck. Just looking at Sam’s broken body language brought it back, so coward that he was, he was avoiding Sam. Not that Sam seemed to mind. His brother didn’t appear to have any inclination to be around him either.
He paused in the entrance to the kitchen, seeing Sam there. The big guy’s back was to him so Dean could ease out and his brother would never know he was there. But no, this was stupid. They needed to talk this out sometime and although Dean wasn’t ready for that now, they could make a start by being in the same room with each other for more than two minutes.
Resolved, he walked into the kitchen and passed Sam to get to the fridge. Room smelled like a brewery. The empties made it look like someone had a hell of a party in here. Sounded like a good idea. Dean hadn’t had a drink for…who the hell knew how long?
He pulled out a can, one of only two left, popped the lid and turned to leave. That hadn’t been so bad. Now if he could only muster the cajones to look at Sam, say a few companionable words, they could start the process of getting back on even ground.
“Uh, look, Sam…” Dean lifted his gaze from the beer and onto Sam and the tiles rocked out from under him. “What the hell are you doing?”
In one stride he flicked the blade out of his brother’s grasp and had his palms circled around the bleeding arm, pressing tight. “What are you doing?” Shock and fear colored his tone with anger.
Sam blinked up at him as though he had no idea why Dean was freaking out. “I’m making notches.”
“In your arm?”
Sam flinched. “What? No. In the cutting board.” He was looking up at him in that way that begged to be believed.
“News flash, nimrod. Breadboards don’t bleed.”
Furrowing his brows, Sam looked down at the board, giving it the weighty consideration it deserved. Blood continued to pool between Dean’s fingers. He couldn’t tell how deep any of the cuts were or how many. Everything was red. This could be bad. This could be real bad.
Sam was looking at his arm now, shaking his head.
Dean peered into his face, studying. “You really thought it was the cutting board?” He didn’t know which answer scared him more.
“I thought…I thought…I didn’t know. I didn’t even feel it.”
Because he was drunk. “Okay. I believe you. Just sit here for a sec.” Dean released his hands long enough to dash to the sink and grab the dish towels out of the drawer. When he turned around Sam was gone.
“Sonofabitch.”
The trail wasn’t too hard to follow what with the splattered drops of blood and bright red fingerprints where Sam had used the wall for support. He caught up with him in a matter of seconds.
“Sam!”
Sam stopped at the command, and turned, grabbing the wall to steady himself. He held his hand out at Dean’s approach. “Stay away from me.” Blood dripped off his fingers onto the floor.
Dean paused, holding up the towels. “Just want to get pressure on your arm. If not, you’ll bleed out.”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe that’s for the best.” Exhausted, he slid down the wall, one long leg folding awkwardly beneath him.
Dean took that as his cue to advance. Drunk, petulant, bleeding younger brothers didn’t get to tell him to stay away. Sinking beside him, he circled Sam’s arm with one of the towels and applied pressure, and leaned against the wall next to him. “So what were the notches for?” He had to keep him talking, compliant, and in place. His brother, always a flight risk.
“People.”
“Okay. What people?”
“Everyone I got killed.”
That brought Dean up short. He lifted the saturated towel to see if the blood was slowing. Sam had nicked himself with little cuts from elbow to wrist. That was a lot of people he felt responsible for. At least he hadn’t been trying to hurt himself because Sam was nothing if not thorough. He would have gone deep in one long furrow up the vein and bled out before Dean found him. Tamping down the lurch of fear that thought caused, Dean used the second dish towel and added pressure.
None of the cuts had looked too deep. Only a couple looked like they needed stitches. The rest would be okay with butterfly bandages. One or two might have nicked a vein but Dean knew how to handle that as well. If Cas would ever show again, he’d get him to heal the whole damn arm so they wouldn’t have to look at it. Like Sam needed to be reminded every day of the people they’d lost, people he blamed himself for. And who had had a hand in making him feel like that?
Dean glanced up at the wall across from them and winced at the hole. They were directly across from the place he had tried to take a hammer to Sam’s head. He hissed between his teeth.
“Sar-Sarah had a child, Dean. Did you know that?”
Dean closed his eyes. He did.
“And Charlie, she…” Sam hung his head. He tried to shake Dean’s hands off of him. “I’m going to go lie down. I feel funny.”
“Yeah, you moron, alcohol and blood loss will do that to you.”
“Let go.”
“Not until the bleeding stops. Then I need to stitch you up.”
Sam looked over at him, incredulous. His wet eyes speared into Dean’s heart. “Why does it matter? I’m so tired, Dean. I just want it all to stop. I can’t do this anymore. All I do is hurt people. I hurt you. Everyone around me gets killed.”
“Sam, no. You didn’t-”
“But Charlie-”
Time for bluntness. Nothing else was going to get through. “Charlie would have died in the Apocalypse same as everyone else if you hadn’t stopped it. Even Sarah and her little girl.” Dean couldn’t believe he was saying this, but he had to get through to Sam. Fight his Sam logic with more irrational logic. “If anything, you gave them a few more years. Look, I know what I said…”
“That you wish I was dead,” Sam whispered like saying it loud solidified it somehow.
It didn’t matter. The quiet words were a punch to Dean’s chest. He sighed. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I deserved it. She’s dead. I’m here and I shouldn’t me.” He wiggled his arm, trying to release Dean’s hold. “I’m gonna go lie down.”
Dean held him in place, more than a little worried it was so easy. Sam had no fight left in him.
“Dean, please. Let me go.”
Relentless bastard that he was, Dean couldn’t give him what he wanted. “No.”
Sam wilted against the wall, resigned. Which was more frightening than when he was arguing his point with him. He was going to have to be with him twenty-four seven or risk letting him fade away.
“Sam.”
No response. Sam just stared at his lap. His lashes lowered. They were almost black against the chalkiness of his cheeks.
“Sammy,” Dean said quietly in the same tone he’d used when Sam was a child.
This time Sam responded, looking up at him with eyes so full of despair it physically hurt. There it was, Dean realized. Or rather there it wasn’t. Why Sam’s eyes seemed wrong. Wrong from the moment the Darkness attacked him. Every single other time Sam looked at him like this, it was with the glimmer of hope that Dean would make it right. That if they were in this together, it would be okay. When they were in that warehouse and Sam didn’t know what was real, he’d still looked at him with unwavering trust and hope.
That hope was gone. Completely gone. Dean studied him, searching. All he found was self-loathing and despair.
“Sammy, we keep fighting, right? No matter what.” He tested the theory that was forming in his mind.
Sam shrunk away. “I don’t know what to fight for anymore.”
Because what’s there to fight for when your stone number one wants you dead? Dean had effed up badly. He’d taken a sledge hammer to Sam’s foundation. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t really him, but the Mark’s influence. He could work on his own self-loathing later. Right now he had to fix this, somehow convince Sam that he was still the brother he’d do anything for. Him and Sam against the world.
How did it come to this? Sam was usually more resilient, able to shake things off and forgive on a monumental scale. Pragmatic to the core, he could see things for what they were, internalize it, and move on to save the world again and again. Why couldn’t he pull himself out of the fog this time?
Fog. Dean groaned. Stupid stupid. It was there looking him square in the face all this time. The Darkness had swarmed all over Sam, had been inside of him, would have killed him if not for Dean being the key. What if it wasn’t an unleashing of monsters or ghosts or some supernatural crap like that, but something more sinister? A mass cloud of despair and depression that overshadowed any resolve of hope. Burned it out of a person.
It was right there in Sam’s eyes all along. And Dean had left him alone to cope with it. They needed to rethink what they were looking for, search out higher frequencies of suicides…
Letting go of Sam’s towel covered arm with one hand, he pulled Sam close. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m so sorry.”
He nearly wept when Sam let his head drop onto his shoulder. His damp hair tickled his chin. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just keep fighting. That’s all you have to do. Keep fighting.”
All Dean had to do was give him something to keep fighting for.
Fin
Usual Disclaimers of non-ownership applies.
Alcohol and Blood Loss
The Darkness rode over the Impala, jostling the vehicle.Dean kept steady pressure on the gas, hoping the shaking from outside might somehow rock them out of the pothole and plunge them forward and out of the vaporous gray. It pressed against the windows like flattened curls of fog covering the glass. Their only light came from the instrument panel on the dashboard.
Dean met Sam’s worried gaze. Younger brother had one hand braced against the dashboard, his back pressed against the window, lips tight.
“Sam!” Dean cried out as a tendril snaked between the glass and top of the car behind Sam’s head. Sam jerked away from the ashy haze twining in the air. Several more tendrils got between the gaps above the window, and others smoked in through the vents. And hell, the odor. Decaying corpses doused in old lady perfume.
“Gah!” Sam cried out and clutched his head. “Dean!” His back arched, shoulders grinding against the seat as the coils of fog touched him.
Twisting in the seat, Dean grabbed Sam’s wrist. The kid’s arm was locked hard, muscles straining, hand practically knuckling into his temple. Horrified, Dean watched another vine of gray push through the driver side window and pass him by to go straight for his brother.
Sam cried out again. Dean snapped his attention to his brother’s face, heart pounding. Blood was dripping from Sam’s eyes, his nose. On a harsh shudder, Sam folded over, head scraping along the dashboard.
“Sam!” Dean held onto the back of his shoulders. He didn’t know what to do. All the curls of darkness that got in were arrowing straight toward his brother, leaving him completely alone. He didn’t know what to do. It was killing Sam. Why wasn’t it affecting him?
The Mark. Dean had been the key.
Was that it? He was untouchable, but his brother… Screw that. Dean’s foot left the gas pedal and he lunged across Sam, curling over him, a human shield against the Darkness. He didn’t know if it would work. If the cloud could get into the car, certainly it could get past him. He wasn’t near large enough to cover all of Sam, but he had to do something!
“Just hold on, just hold on.” Dean felt Sam panting beneath him. The tension in his back was incredible. Dean pressed himself into Sam harder, his cheek flat against the bumps of his sibling’s spine. Just holding on, riding it out.
It seemed to be working. Dean felt the coldness of the fog touch him and then retreat like a living aware thing that was wary of getting too close to him, even to go after Sam.
The strain in Sam’s muscles loosened even as the tremors in his limbs increased. Dean dared to lift his head, saw the last of the mist pull out of his car the same way it had gotten in, joining the rest of the rolling gray cloud as it washed across the windows and moved on, scouring the horizon behind them. And then it was gone.
And Sam was scrabbling for the door handle, toppling out of the car, and puking into the wind-scorned dirt.
Dean scrambled out and around the car. And stopped cold.
Sam wasn’t just vomiting. He was heaving out runny black goo, trembling and shaky, his sweaty hair falling around his face. Dean opened the trunk, grabbed a water bottle and crouched beside him, offering quiet support. He was a little shaky himself.
That stuff had gotten inside of Sam. His chest squeezed tighter at each pout of heaving. He tried to look anywhere but at the black mess, willing Sam to get it all out of him, and hating that he had to go through this.
Finally Sam pulled back, sitting dejectedly on his knees in the same position he had when Dean held Death’s scythe over him less than thirty minutes ago. Dean stared straight ahead, unable to look at him, on the threshold of emptying the contents of his own stomach.
“Here,” he croaked, holding the water bottle out sideways to Sam. Sam didn’t take it, didn’t stir.
Dean took a sidewise glance and swore. A line of blood trailed from beneath the long hair where Sam’s ear was hidden down his neck and along his clavicle. “The hell.” Dropping the water, he turned Sam’s face to him. Blood was everywhere. Coming from his ears, nostrils, his eyes. And still coming. No, actually those were tears, mixing in the blood coated on his face. Miniscule tremors punctuated each shallow wet breath. His bloodshot eyes were unfocused, wholly not there…and wrong.
A terrible unease kicked the inside of Dean’s gut with steel-toed delivery.
“Sam.” He took his brother by the upper arms and twisted his torso to look at him. “Sam!” He shook him. “Snap the hell out of it.” He shook him again, hard enough to wrench bones out of sockets. “Sam!”
That did it. On a loud inhale, Sam came back, his eyes widening in shock, and then his entire countenance crumpled. “No,” he wailed, thrashing out of Dean’s grip and crabbing backwards away from him. “No, get away. I saw-” he trembled on a breath. “I saw-”
“What?” Dean scrambled after him. “What did you see?”
Sam’s head yanked up, a devastation pulsing so clearly in his eyes it made Dean reel back. He’d never seen anything like it, not after the cage, not after being soulless, not after Jess’s death.
“The…the Darkness.” Sam began shaking so hard that his hands scratched zigzags in the dirt. “I saw…I saw…”
“Hey.” Dean inched closer. “Whatever you saw, it’s gone now. We’re okay.”
“But…”
“We’re okay. It can’t be any worse than anything we’ve already seen. And we dealt with those.”
Sam shook his head, his lips quivering, on the verge of losing it.
“You lasted through the cage. It can’t be worse than that.” He hated saying that, but he had to get Sam out of whatever this was now.
Sam’s eyes latched onto his. His entire body was trembling. “Worse. It’s worse, so much worse.” His chest rose and fell in hard gasps.
“Sam?”
He flung his hand out to stop Dean’s approach. “I did this I did this stay back get away from me I did this…”
“Sam, you got to calm down, bro. Just take it eas-shit.”
Sam’s rapid breathing finally stalled. His eyes rolled back in his head and he crumbled to the dirt.
~~~SPN~~~
Apparently he’d been out of it for two days. When Sam awoke in the bunker, it was to his brother’s worried unshaven features. They didn’t speak much. What was there to say? You killed Death. I let out the Darkness. Dean brought him up to speed. There were no off centered news reports of anything the Darkness might have tripped. Only one sighting of a dark rolling cloud from a farmer. No unusual deaths. So far the world destruction Death had foretold came to a big steaming pile of zilch. The world kept going on as it usually did.
They hoped the last horseman had simply been spewing an empty threat to manipulate them, but they would research the Darkness and keep their ears to the ground for anything that proved otherwise.
Maybe this was a win for them.
And pigs could fly.
At least no one had been killed by the Darkness.
Just in unleashing it. Sam’s fingers curled over the old tome he was reading, seeing Charlie’s shrouded form instead of the Sanskrit he was trying to translate. He reached for the Johnny Walker Black next to him and drained what little left was in the bottle, willing the smoky warmth to dull the ache in his heart.
It was funny. He usually didn’t bury himself in alcohol. That was Dean’s way, but Sam couldn’t seem to lift himself out of his funk without the constant buzz, while Dean right now was cold sober. At least he thought he was. He actually hadn’t gotten a close look to know. When Dean entered a room, Sam left. And when Sam was somewhere and Dean came upon him, he grabbed what he needed and walked out. Neither speaking or really taking a close look at each other. Dean could be on a bender of his own for all Sam knew. It had been going on like this for three days. Or four. Maybe five? Sam honestly didn’t know.
He closed the old tome and scooted the chair back. A wash of dizziness hit him when he stood and staggered away from the long table. The contents of his stomach sloshed and the dulling he craved felt more like nausea. It wasn’t working. He still felt…bad. He didn’t know why he couldn’t climb out of it and grasp onto the hope that they could fix it. The Mark was off Dean. They were alive. This was a win, right? Better than most wins they’d counted. He’d saved his brother for once. They had hope for the future. They still had hope, right? So why couldn’t he feel it?
Maybe he was making himself too sick to feel it. He needed to get some food into his sloshing stomach. He’d eaten. He knew better to drink on an empty stomach. He just couldn’t remember when the last time he ate was.
He drug himself into the kitchen, looking to see if Dean was in there. He hoped not. He wasn’t ready to face his brother, not yet.
Seeing that he was alone, Sam made it to the table and slouched into the chair. What had he come in here for? Oh right, food. Open beer cans and bottles of whiskey littered the counters and tables. It looked like someone had one hell of a party.
There was a wrapped loaf of bread beside the cutting board on the table. The kind Dean got from the local bakery that was fresh and unsliced. Sam unwrapped it. A third of the loaf was already gone. Dean must have been making himself sandwiches. There was a time when Dean would have made him a sandwich too. When Sam got into research mode, Dean always made sure he ate. He wouldn’t do that now, because now Dean wanted him dead, wanted him on a burning pyre in Charlie’s place. Wanted to slide Death’s scythe across his throat. He wondered if Dean had intended to put him on a pyre after that or if he and Death would have just vanished, leaving Sam’s corpse to rot on the dirty floor of that cantina.
Not that he didn’t deserve that. He did. He’d gotten Charlie killed. His fault. No one else’s. Just like always.
He’d gotten his mom killed too. Somehow the bread knife was in his hand. He carved a careful notch into the cutting board.
Then Jess. Another notch.
Dad. Then D-dean. He’d gotten Dean killed. Pamela. Three more notches.
Marshall Hall. Jim. Caleb. He cut into the wood gently for each one. The names kept coming. So many deaths on his hands.
Ash. Andy. Ava. Jo. Ellen. Amy. Bobby. His vision blurred behind a wet sheen, yet he kept slicing notches.
Adam. Kate. Rufus. Annie. Kevin. Sar-Sarah…
~~~SPN~~~
Dean’s eyes blurred. He couldn’t look at the computer screen any longer. Besides that, nothing was turning up. Perhaps they really had dodged a bullet this time. It didn’t match with their usual luck, but he’d take it for now. Regardless, he needed a break.
He avoided the library where Sam had been holed up most of the week. Brainiac had been quiet once he’d woken up. Too quiet, but Dean let him be. At least he hadn’t woken up shaking and wailing about the Darkness and it being his fault. Okay, yeah, a big part of it was Sam’s fault, but he didn’t know about the Mark being a key, and could Dean really say he wouldn’t have done the same?
But crying that he’d seen the Darkness and it was worse than the cage. Dean’s fists clenched. What could be worse than the cage? Standing over your kneeling brother ready to take his head off, that’s what. A tremor rolled through Dean’s core. No matter how hard he tried to scrub that image away, it stuck. Just looking at Sam’s broken body language brought it back, so coward that he was, he was avoiding Sam. Not that Sam seemed to mind. His brother didn’t appear to have any inclination to be around him either.
He paused in the entrance to the kitchen, seeing Sam there. The big guy’s back was to him so Dean could ease out and his brother would never know he was there. But no, this was stupid. They needed to talk this out sometime and although Dean wasn’t ready for that now, they could make a start by being in the same room with each other for more than two minutes.
Resolved, he walked into the kitchen and passed Sam to get to the fridge. Room smelled like a brewery. The empties made it look like someone had a hell of a party in here. Sounded like a good idea. Dean hadn’t had a drink for…who the hell knew how long?
He pulled out a can, one of only two left, popped the lid and turned to leave. That hadn’t been so bad. Now if he could only muster the cajones to look at Sam, say a few companionable words, they could start the process of getting back on even ground.
“Uh, look, Sam…” Dean lifted his gaze from the beer and onto Sam and the tiles rocked out from under him. “What the hell are you doing?”
In one stride he flicked the blade out of his brother’s grasp and had his palms circled around the bleeding arm, pressing tight. “What are you doing?” Shock and fear colored his tone with anger.
Sam blinked up at him as though he had no idea why Dean was freaking out. “I’m making notches.”
“In your arm?”
Sam flinched. “What? No. In the cutting board.” He was looking up at him in that way that begged to be believed.
“News flash, nimrod. Breadboards don’t bleed.”
Furrowing his brows, Sam looked down at the board, giving it the weighty consideration it deserved. Blood continued to pool between Dean’s fingers. He couldn’t tell how deep any of the cuts were or how many. Everything was red. This could be bad. This could be real bad.
Sam was looking at his arm now, shaking his head.
Dean peered into his face, studying. “You really thought it was the cutting board?” He didn’t know which answer scared him more.
“I thought…I thought…I didn’t know. I didn’t even feel it.”
Because he was drunk. “Okay. I believe you. Just sit here for a sec.” Dean released his hands long enough to dash to the sink and grab the dish towels out of the drawer. When he turned around Sam was gone.
“Sonofabitch.”
The trail wasn’t too hard to follow what with the splattered drops of blood and bright red fingerprints where Sam had used the wall for support. He caught up with him in a matter of seconds.
“Sam!”
Sam stopped at the command, and turned, grabbing the wall to steady himself. He held his hand out at Dean’s approach. “Stay away from me.” Blood dripped off his fingers onto the floor.
Dean paused, holding up the towels. “Just want to get pressure on your arm. If not, you’ll bleed out.”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe that’s for the best.” Exhausted, he slid down the wall, one long leg folding awkwardly beneath him.
Dean took that as his cue to advance. Drunk, petulant, bleeding younger brothers didn’t get to tell him to stay away. Sinking beside him, he circled Sam’s arm with one of the towels and applied pressure, and leaned against the wall next to him. “So what were the notches for?” He had to keep him talking, compliant, and in place. His brother, always a flight risk.
“People.”
“Okay. What people?”
“Everyone I got killed.”
That brought Dean up short. He lifted the saturated towel to see if the blood was slowing. Sam had nicked himself with little cuts from elbow to wrist. That was a lot of people he felt responsible for. At least he hadn’t been trying to hurt himself because Sam was nothing if not thorough. He would have gone deep in one long furrow up the vein and bled out before Dean found him. Tamping down the lurch of fear that thought caused, Dean used the second dish towel and added pressure.
None of the cuts had looked too deep. Only a couple looked like they needed stitches. The rest would be okay with butterfly bandages. One or two might have nicked a vein but Dean knew how to handle that as well. If Cas would ever show again, he’d get him to heal the whole damn arm so they wouldn’t have to look at it. Like Sam needed to be reminded every day of the people they’d lost, people he blamed himself for. And who had had a hand in making him feel like that?
Dean glanced up at the wall across from them and winced at the hole. They were directly across from the place he had tried to take a hammer to Sam’s head. He hissed between his teeth.
“Sar-Sarah had a child, Dean. Did you know that?”
Dean closed his eyes. He did.
“And Charlie, she…” Sam hung his head. He tried to shake Dean’s hands off of him. “I’m going to go lie down. I feel funny.”
“Yeah, you moron, alcohol and blood loss will do that to you.”
“Let go.”
“Not until the bleeding stops. Then I need to stitch you up.”
Sam looked over at him, incredulous. His wet eyes speared into Dean’s heart. “Why does it matter? I’m so tired, Dean. I just want it all to stop. I can’t do this anymore. All I do is hurt people. I hurt you. Everyone around me gets killed.”
“Sam, no. You didn’t-”
“But Charlie-”
Time for bluntness. Nothing else was going to get through. “Charlie would have died in the Apocalypse same as everyone else if you hadn’t stopped it. Even Sarah and her little girl.” Dean couldn’t believe he was saying this, but he had to get through to Sam. Fight his Sam logic with more irrational logic. “If anything, you gave them a few more years. Look, I know what I said…”
“That you wish I was dead,” Sam whispered like saying it loud solidified it somehow.
It didn’t matter. The quiet words were a punch to Dean’s chest. He sighed. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I deserved it. She’s dead. I’m here and I shouldn’t me.” He wiggled his arm, trying to release Dean’s hold. “I’m gonna go lie down.”
Dean held him in place, more than a little worried it was so easy. Sam had no fight left in him.
“Dean, please. Let me go.”
Relentless bastard that he was, Dean couldn’t give him what he wanted. “No.”
Sam wilted against the wall, resigned. Which was more frightening than when he was arguing his point with him. He was going to have to be with him twenty-four seven or risk letting him fade away.
“Sam.”
No response. Sam just stared at his lap. His lashes lowered. They were almost black against the chalkiness of his cheeks.
“Sammy,” Dean said quietly in the same tone he’d used when Sam was a child.
This time Sam responded, looking up at him with eyes so full of despair it physically hurt. There it was, Dean realized. Or rather there it wasn’t. Why Sam’s eyes seemed wrong. Wrong from the moment the Darkness attacked him. Every single other time Sam looked at him like this, it was with the glimmer of hope that Dean would make it right. That if they were in this together, it would be okay. When they were in that warehouse and Sam didn’t know what was real, he’d still looked at him with unwavering trust and hope.
That hope was gone. Completely gone. Dean studied him, searching. All he found was self-loathing and despair.
“Sammy, we keep fighting, right? No matter what.” He tested the theory that was forming in his mind.
Sam shrunk away. “I don’t know what to fight for anymore.”
Because what’s there to fight for when your stone number one wants you dead? Dean had effed up badly. He’d taken a sledge hammer to Sam’s foundation. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t really him, but the Mark’s influence. He could work on his own self-loathing later. Right now he had to fix this, somehow convince Sam that he was still the brother he’d do anything for. Him and Sam against the world.
How did it come to this? Sam was usually more resilient, able to shake things off and forgive on a monumental scale. Pragmatic to the core, he could see things for what they were, internalize it, and move on to save the world again and again. Why couldn’t he pull himself out of the fog this time?
Fog. Dean groaned. Stupid stupid. It was there looking him square in the face all this time. The Darkness had swarmed all over Sam, had been inside of him, would have killed him if not for Dean being the key. What if it wasn’t an unleashing of monsters or ghosts or some supernatural crap like that, but something more sinister? A mass cloud of despair and depression that overshadowed any resolve of hope. Burned it out of a person.
It was right there in Sam’s eyes all along. And Dean had left him alone to cope with it. They needed to rethink what they were looking for, search out higher frequencies of suicides…
Letting go of Sam’s towel covered arm with one hand, he pulled Sam close. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m so sorry.”
He nearly wept when Sam let his head drop onto his shoulder. His damp hair tickled his chin. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just keep fighting. That’s all you have to do. Keep fighting.”
All Dean had to do was give him something to keep fighting for.
Fin