Supernatural fic:These Dreams 1/1 [G] Dean, Sam - 6.05 coda
Title: These Dreams
Rating: G
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.05
Notes: Coda to 6.05, sort of. Dean POV.
This is a coda in the sense that it takes place more or less chronologically after the episode and before the next one. It occurs in the alternate never-never land that all the codas I've written so far occur in - the space between what we know and what we don't. It is fully prepared to be Kripke'd, or Gamble'd, at the end of the week.
10/26/10 09:31:35 AM
These Dreams
Dean had thought the hard part would be getting the dreamroot, but as it turned out, Bobby kept a supply on hand, ever since his near death experience a couple of years back. He didn't ask too many questions when Dean asked him to FedEx it overnight. Maybe he assumed it was for a case.
Maybe he knew exactly what Dean planned to do with it and didn't want to have his hunch confirmed.
Getting a snippet of Sam's hair from the bathroom sink was easy - the damn stuff was way too long anyway and Sam was keeping it clean and groomed. His whole regimen was so efficient it was scary, rather than gay.
Choking it down in his own dose of dreamroot was something Dean did with grim intent. But seriously. It was on the list of things Sammy was going to receive paybacks for, once Dean knew what the hell was going on with the kid.
The minute he found himself sitting at the dinner table in the house in Cicero Dean knew that he was dreaming. Lisa was bringing pot roast to the table, wearing a neglige, and Ben was eight instead of twelve. But it felt familiar. The glass of amber liquid in his hand was familiar. The quiet, cheerful talk around the table faded a little as he found himself looking up, looking at the window directly across from him. Looking out the window.
Sam was standing right there, under a street lamp that had gone dark.
For a moment there was vertigo as his point of view changed from inside the house looking out the window, to outside the house looking into the window, and back. Perception flickered.
Sam. This was Sam's memory. Dean was suddenly sure this had actually happened. Well, except for Lisa's neglige. In fact, when he was outside looking in, she was dressed in regular clothes, jeans and a sweater.
The other different thing was that the Dean inside the house never looked up.
This was what Sam dreamed about?
Dean had no strong sense of affirmation or denial to that thought. He wasn't really sure if this was Sam's dream or still his own, but as he poked at the idea, he was suddenly aware that he was back inside the house, staring through the window at the silent, statue-still figure outside - way to imitate Michael Meyers, Sammy - and that his eyes were being met.
Like a spark jumping between two conductors, he knew what would happen next and jumped up from the table, running to the front door and out of it even as Sam turned away.
Dammit, Sammy, don't you dare run away from me...
Sam wasn't running, but the son of a bitch could move like the wind anyway. Dean felt suddenly trapped in thick molasses. He remembered being able to move so fast, after he'd been turned into a freaking bloodsucker... wished he could move like that now, without the downsides, and the ground blurred. His hand closed on Sam's jacket sleeve.
Sam's face looked back with a startled expression, as if that wasn't supposed to happen.
His eyes met Dean's again, close this time, widened, and his hand in turn reached for Dean's opposite shoulder.
No.
You can't be here.
Not yet.
And Dean was being spun around, and pushed away, the force of it buffeting Dean like a storm wind.
Son of a bitch, Sammy, oh no you just did not...
“SAAAM!”
Around them was Stull Cemetary. Sam was backing away. When the ground opened up beneath his feet, Dean didn't hesitate.
He took the dive.
The fall took forever, and no time at all. His hands grabbed at his head, maybe to keep his brains from pouring out of his ears as he was smashed from inside and out with pressure, so much pressure...
After an agonizing eternity of being stretched into nothing and compressed to nonexistence, there was a snap, and something was ripped apart and torn away from the rest.
Part of him plunged into the abyss and the world snapped closed over him.
Part of him was flung up and out like a seed being spit from the mouth of Hell.
Stunned, he lay where he'd been flung. Lungs worked, mouth gasped from breath, but inside there was a great bloody hole, a void, something ripped out by the roots...
And that. That was not unfamiliar.
Dean knew that hole.
He knew the Void. He'd lived with it from the first time he'd seen the knife plunge into his brother's back. It had been there even longer, maybe, but that was when it stretched too wide to ignore, expanding exponentially with every passing second until he'd dug a hole at a crossroads and mortgaged his soul to get back even a part of what he thought ought to fit there.
Hell hounds had ripped it wider. Alistair had carved it with savage delicacy bigger, and bigger. Eventually, Dean himself had taken up the knife and taken pieces of himself out of it with every slice he carved in damned souls on his rack.
A white hot hand had pulled him up, and in time, the hole had closed up a little, but it was still there.
He realized he tried to fill it up with everything.
When Sam had fallen, he'd fallen into that same hole.
Dean had wanted to find a gun, and use a bullet as his ticket to follow, but Sam had made him promise. He'd dragged himself to Lisa and she'd done an amazing job of pulling it closed again, little by little.
But it was still there. Maybe would always be there.
Dean wasn't afraid of it.
If that was where he had to go to follow Sam, then someone had miscalculated.
There wasn't sound, in the pit. In the Pit, in the Cage. He was deeper than he'd ever gone, deeper than he'd ever imagined there could be.
There wasn't sound but there were whispers. No screams, but there were half uttered words, prayers or curses. The shattering voices of angels, muffled to muted thunder.
The light was blinding. The darkness was absolute.
Somewhere, in a place that had no right to exist, there was a table, and a chair. The only light was on the table. A figure sat in the chair.
Dean knew the figure the moment he saw it, even though it flickered and changed from time to time. One moment it was wearing torn and dirty jeans and the shreds of a shirt, a jacket. The next, it was clothed in clean white. Not a suit, but a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, in defiance of whatever had clad it so.
On the table, there were cards. The figure Dean recognized picked one card up from a face down pile, looked at it. Held it.
Placed it deliberately down.
It was the Jack of Hearts.
It flickered.
It was The Fool.
He laid it down across another card, already lying on the table's surface. Like the other, this card flicked.
The Jack of Spades.
The Hanged Man.
There was someone else watching, Dean could feel them. Whoever, or whatever, it didn't seem to know he was there. It watched Sam take the card off the face-down pile, and it laughed.
The laugh was familiar, but Dean couldn't place it.
There was no sound here, but there were whispers. Curses. Prayers. Thunder. And a laugh that was something of all of those.
You can't win, the laugh said. You made a choice.
And you aren't good enough.
Sam's mouth moved, though he didn't look up from the cards. His mouth moved, and there was no sound. No whisper, no prayer.
But Dean could read his lips.
”I'm not good enough,” Sam seemed to agree. ”I can't win.
But he will.”
His fingertip touched the edge of the card. The Jack of Hearts. The Fool.
The laugh became ugly. The pressure increased in density.
A drop of blood came out of Sam's nose.
He's not coming for you.
“I know.”
You can't save him.
“I know.”
Dean opened his mouth to say, Sammy, I'll save you... before he could stop himself.
There was no sound. But Sam looked up. His eyes widened.
”You can't be here!” And there was real fear in his eyes for the first time. His hand flattened protectively over the card and his other hand flung upward with more energy that should have been possible under so much pressure.
Afterward, Dean just flat refused to accept that Sam's lips had shaped Expelliarmus!
Because that would have been just twinky, even in a geekboy's dream.
Dean woke with a sudden sensation of slamming into something - his body, his bed.
A moment later, the other bed creaked, as Sam got up, paused, shook his head, and then headed to the bathroom to start his regimen.
~
11:01:00 AM
~
Rating: G
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.05
Notes: Coda to 6.05, sort of. Dean POV.
This is a coda in the sense that it takes place more or less chronologically after the episode and before the next one. It occurs in the alternate never-never land that all the codas I've written so far occur in - the space between what we know and what we don't. It is fully prepared to be Kripke'd, or Gamble'd, at the end of the week.
10/26/10 09:31:35 AM
These Dreams
Dean had thought the hard part would be getting the dreamroot, but as it turned out, Bobby kept a supply on hand, ever since his near death experience a couple of years back. He didn't ask too many questions when Dean asked him to FedEx it overnight. Maybe he assumed it was for a case.
Maybe he knew exactly what Dean planned to do with it and didn't want to have his hunch confirmed.
Getting a snippet of Sam's hair from the bathroom sink was easy - the damn stuff was way too long anyway and Sam was keeping it clean and groomed. His whole regimen was so efficient it was scary, rather than gay.
Choking it down in his own dose of dreamroot was something Dean did with grim intent. But seriously. It was on the list of things Sammy was going to receive paybacks for, once Dean knew what the hell was going on with the kid.
The minute he found himself sitting at the dinner table in the house in Cicero Dean knew that he was dreaming. Lisa was bringing pot roast to the table, wearing a neglige, and Ben was eight instead of twelve. But it felt familiar. The glass of amber liquid in his hand was familiar. The quiet, cheerful talk around the table faded a little as he found himself looking up, looking at the window directly across from him. Looking out the window.
Sam was standing right there, under a street lamp that had gone dark.
For a moment there was vertigo as his point of view changed from inside the house looking out the window, to outside the house looking into the window, and back. Perception flickered.
Sam. This was Sam's memory. Dean was suddenly sure this had actually happened. Well, except for Lisa's neglige. In fact, when he was outside looking in, she was dressed in regular clothes, jeans and a sweater.
The other different thing was that the Dean inside the house never looked up.
This was what Sam dreamed about?
Dean had no strong sense of affirmation or denial to that thought. He wasn't really sure if this was Sam's dream or still his own, but as he poked at the idea, he was suddenly aware that he was back inside the house, staring through the window at the silent, statue-still figure outside - way to imitate Michael Meyers, Sammy - and that his eyes were being met.
Like a spark jumping between two conductors, he knew what would happen next and jumped up from the table, running to the front door and out of it even as Sam turned away.
Dammit, Sammy, don't you dare run away from me...
Sam wasn't running, but the son of a bitch could move like the wind anyway. Dean felt suddenly trapped in thick molasses. He remembered being able to move so fast, after he'd been turned into a freaking bloodsucker... wished he could move like that now, without the downsides, and the ground blurred. His hand closed on Sam's jacket sleeve.
Sam's face looked back with a startled expression, as if that wasn't supposed to happen.
His eyes met Dean's again, close this time, widened, and his hand in turn reached for Dean's opposite shoulder.
No.
You can't be here.
Not yet.
And Dean was being spun around, and pushed away, the force of it buffeting Dean like a storm wind.
Son of a bitch, Sammy, oh no you just did not...
“SAAAM!”
Around them was Stull Cemetary. Sam was backing away. When the ground opened up beneath his feet, Dean didn't hesitate.
He took the dive.
The fall took forever, and no time at all. His hands grabbed at his head, maybe to keep his brains from pouring out of his ears as he was smashed from inside and out with pressure, so much pressure...
After an agonizing eternity of being stretched into nothing and compressed to nonexistence, there was a snap, and something was ripped apart and torn away from the rest.
Part of him plunged into the abyss and the world snapped closed over him.
Part of him was flung up and out like a seed being spit from the mouth of Hell.
Stunned, he lay where he'd been flung. Lungs worked, mouth gasped from breath, but inside there was a great bloody hole, a void, something ripped out by the roots...
And that. That was not unfamiliar.
Dean knew that hole.
He knew the Void. He'd lived with it from the first time he'd seen the knife plunge into his brother's back. It had been there even longer, maybe, but that was when it stretched too wide to ignore, expanding exponentially with every passing second until he'd dug a hole at a crossroads and mortgaged his soul to get back even a part of what he thought ought to fit there.
Hell hounds had ripped it wider. Alistair had carved it with savage delicacy bigger, and bigger. Eventually, Dean himself had taken up the knife and taken pieces of himself out of it with every slice he carved in damned souls on his rack.
A white hot hand had pulled him up, and in time, the hole had closed up a little, but it was still there.
He realized he tried to fill it up with everything.
When Sam had fallen, he'd fallen into that same hole.
Dean had wanted to find a gun, and use a bullet as his ticket to follow, but Sam had made him promise. He'd dragged himself to Lisa and she'd done an amazing job of pulling it closed again, little by little.
But it was still there. Maybe would always be there.
Dean wasn't afraid of it.
If that was where he had to go to follow Sam, then someone had miscalculated.
There wasn't sound, in the pit. In the Pit, in the Cage. He was deeper than he'd ever gone, deeper than he'd ever imagined there could be.
There wasn't sound but there were whispers. No screams, but there were half uttered words, prayers or curses. The shattering voices of angels, muffled to muted thunder.
The light was blinding. The darkness was absolute.
Somewhere, in a place that had no right to exist, there was a table, and a chair. The only light was on the table. A figure sat in the chair.
Dean knew the figure the moment he saw it, even though it flickered and changed from time to time. One moment it was wearing torn and dirty jeans and the shreds of a shirt, a jacket. The next, it was clothed in clean white. Not a suit, but a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, in defiance of whatever had clad it so.
On the table, there were cards. The figure Dean recognized picked one card up from a face down pile, looked at it. Held it.
Placed it deliberately down.
It was the Jack of Hearts.
It flickered.
It was The Fool.
He laid it down across another card, already lying on the table's surface. Like the other, this card flicked.
The Jack of Spades.
The Hanged Man.
There was someone else watching, Dean could feel them. Whoever, or whatever, it didn't seem to know he was there. It watched Sam take the card off the face-down pile, and it laughed.
The laugh was familiar, but Dean couldn't place it.
There was no sound here, but there were whispers. Curses. Prayers. Thunder. And a laugh that was something of all of those.
You can't win, the laugh said. You made a choice.
And you aren't good enough.
Sam's mouth moved, though he didn't look up from the cards. His mouth moved, and there was no sound. No whisper, no prayer.
But Dean could read his lips.
”I'm not good enough,” Sam seemed to agree. ”I can't win.
But he will.”
His fingertip touched the edge of the card. The Jack of Hearts. The Fool.
The laugh became ugly. The pressure increased in density.
A drop of blood came out of Sam's nose.
He's not coming for you.
“I know.”
You can't save him.
“I know.”
Dean opened his mouth to say, Sammy, I'll save you... before he could stop himself.
There was no sound. But Sam looked up. His eyes widened.
”You can't be here!” And there was real fear in his eyes for the first time. His hand flattened protectively over the card and his other hand flung upward with more energy that should have been possible under so much pressure.
Afterward, Dean just flat refused to accept that Sam's lips had shaped Expelliarmus!
Because that would have been just twinky, even in a geekboy's dream.
Dean woke with a sudden sensation of slamming into something - his body, his bed.
A moment later, the other bed creaked, as Sam got up, paused, shook his head, and then headed to the bathroom to start his regimen.
~
11:01:00 AM
~