Supernatural fic:These Dreams, Again 1/1 [PG] Dean, Sam - 6.07 coda
Title: These Dreams, Again
Rating: PG
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.07
Notes: Coda to 6.07. Dean POV, with brief bit of Sam POV
This takes place in the space between what we know and what we don't. It is not intended to be accurate, just to be one possible take.
11/12/10 10:49:29 AM
These Dreams, Again
The fact of the matter was that Dean was exhausted. After finding out his brother was minus his soul, then getting side tracked by an Alpha Vampire hunt, only to discover that his formerly dead, resurrected grandfather not only did have his soul, but happened to be working - willingly - for the friggin King of the damn Crossroads... no, scratch that, the goddam King of Hell, for crap's sake!
Well, it left a guy a little tired.
Not to mention the fact that Dean hadn't really slept since he'd been turned into a frickin vampire himself, thanks to said soulless brother, and then turned back, which... that cure... he could honestly now say he'd ingested something that tasted fouler than goat's testicles, or whatever it was that Bear Grylls had immediately chucked back up in front of those Bedouin guys, who sure knew a sucker when they saw one coming.
So no sleep for, say, three days, and all the exercise a hunter in the middle of another damn evil clown apocalypse... no, in the middle of another frickin Winchester Family Crisis got.
So yeah. And his thoughts were starting to repeat in wide, slightly wobbly circles again.
The thing was, it was one thing to pull up to a motel and get a key for the night. Park his baby and drag ass into the room.
Locking the door, throwing up some basic protection... then taking a dive onto the nearest bed...
All under the thoughtful regard of the Boy Who Didn't Sleep.
Dean tried. Soul or no soul, it was Sam, Castiel said so, although all that mumbo jumbo about it being an interesting philosophical question was about ten blocks short of reassuring. As for RoboSam's repeated assurances that he wasn't going to do anything like that ever again... yeah, that could cause insomnia right there on its own.
But Dean did try. He let his eyes close. Tried not to listen to the soft sound of Sam cat-footing it around the room, then settling in a chair. The minute tap of fingers on laptop keyboard, falling intermittently silent while cool (yet somehow weirdly earnest) eyes devoured pages of text.
Dean was sitting up, glaring, no, staring pointedly, before he could stop himself.
Sam's head swiveled.
“What?”
Dean was so tired, he just failed at articulating anything.
Sam leaned back in the chair, with a perfect implication of a sigh.
“What, Dean? Go to sleep.”
“You go to sleep.” It was childish and petulant, and delivered in a growl that was still somehow helpless.
“I thought you didn't want me to lie.”
“Have you tried? I mean, really, Sam, have you tried to go to sleep?”
There was a short silence instead of a glib answer.
For a moment, Dean felt a funny tickle of hope. It wasn't rational, but his brain was so sleep deprived it was a miracle he wasn't seeing little pink elephants dancing through the room yet.
“Not really.” The implied sigh almost became an actual one. “I just don't feel like it.”
“You don't get tired?”
“No, Dean, I get tired. And I rest. But my...” Sam stopped short of a complete sentence.
“Your what?”
“My brain won't shut off.” Sam looked oddly apologetic. “It just won't.”
Dean thought about Sam's brain not shutting off for an entire. Year.
The shudder was visible.
“I could beat you unconscious again... how did that feel?” The growl was a lot more ragged and almost... eager, than Dean wanted to admit to himself.
Sam managed a bitchface. Funny, that he could do that without his soul.
“It hurt. So, no, I respectfully decline to let you bash my head in every night, okay?”
“Fine, whatever.” Dean tried to rub his eyes back open. It felt like he was grinding sand into them.
“Dean, go to sleep. You need sleep.”
There it was, that serious, almost gentle tone that almost sounded like real concern.
“My brain won't turn off either.”
“If you lay down, I bet it will.”
And of course, now it was like surrendering.
“I'm hungry.”
Sam got up and reached for one of their duffles.
“No, I don't want that two day old hoagie from whereever-it-was.” Petulant again, trying to sound gruff, and instead managing very very cranky.
Sam settled his hands on his hips.
“Okay, tell me what you want, and I'll go get it.”
Well that was almost a dilemma in itself, because part of Dean didn't like letting Sam out of his sight at the moment, and the other part knew the absence would be a relief. Which felt wrong.
After a yawn all but forced itself out, Dean growled and acceded.
“I want a barbecue sandwich. And no side trips, Sammy, you got it?”
“But...”
“But me no buts, you offered. Go. And make it quick, chop chop.”
There was a short moment, and Dean tried to ignore the flicker of calculation he thought he could see in eyes that apparently were his brother's, whatever might be missing behind them.
The moment the door closed behind Sam and the lock clicked, he was crashing, out before the bed springs had stopped protesting the gravity fueled body impact.
There were dreams, it was like they cranked up to ten every damn time, like he was dreaming for two people or something. At first there were the horrible ones he actually expected, all sharp teeth and loud sounds and Lisa's pale face, Ben's scared, betrayed look as he ran away.
There were bright, tingly moments straight from the Alpha Vamp's broadcast. There was a twisted moment in a dark old abandoned factory, of the Alpha's sharp fangs, but not on his own throat, and then red-eyed Sammy with a mouth full of white daggers, coming for him like the wind.
There was hell, in all its red splashed glory and then a twilit, gray place that reminded Dean of a cemetery in Chicago... Graceland, where that girl's statue was supposed to get out of its case and walk the grounds...
“Purgatory's not like that, you poor boy, I swear, Dean, sometimes I think you're a couple of pawns short of a chess set.”
Blinking, Dean rubbed the side of his head, sure he'd just gotten smacked.
He was standing in Missouri's parlor.
“Oh? Then what is it like, if you know so much?” And he didn't want to sound so stupid, didn't want to ask that question at all, but he couldn't be here, and neither could she.
Hands that were delicate but strong enough pushed him to sit on the divan.
“Of course you can be here, and so can I,” she said, settling into the high backed chair with the carved legs. “You're dreaming, you can be anywhere, with anyone. Now, ask me what you really wanted to. Ask me what you came to ask me. Cause you don't have much time, and I don't have all night either.”
The moment she said it, and no matter how uncomfortable the psychic always made him, suddenly Dean didn’t want to go anywhere, wanted to stay right here in the cozy room where it was, somehow he was certain, perhaps the only safe place in all creation.
Missouri leaned over and patted his knee lightly.
“Thank you for that, child. It's not true, but if I had that kind of power, I'd make it so for you and your brother. Now, ask me.”
Something blocked Dean's throat, something so big and tight that it hurt to swallow around it.
“Is... how can it be Sam... without a soul?”
The look she leveled at him was grave and he was prepared for anything, like It can't be!
He was even prepared to feel stupid, as usual. He just need to hear something, something more than that's an interesting philosophical question. Cas got all kinds of points for helping, but none for giving Dean one iota of reassurance on a human level.
“Well,” she said finally, and like her answers often did, it seemed to unravel carefully, like a deliberately knitted sweater taken apart to show how it was made.
“A soul's not like an eyeball, Dean,” and the macabre answer didn't seem at all out of place. “It doesn't just pop out of the socket. You can't just pop it right back in, either. Or maybe... maybe it is a little like an eyeball. As long as the nerves aren't severed, sometimes you can put it back after a trauma...” Her lips pressed together and she shook her head once from side to side.
“Are you saying... the nerves... were severed?” Always he felt stupid with her, but she didn't task him for it this time.
“I'm saying it wasn't a clean cut,” her eyes were dark, watching to see if he got it. “When something - an eye, a soul - is ripped out... it leaves something behind. Leaves pieces of what it was attached to...”
“Pieces... I don't understand,” and that was almost a husked cry.
“Dean!” and there was the exasperation. “Think! What's still around, what was Sam's soul attached to?”
And Dean could think of nothing... nothing...
“Boy, you make me want to hit you upside the head with a spoon...”
The sound of the motel door lock clicking and the door opening and closing dragged Dean away from Missouri's cozy parlor like a dog dragging a bone from a hole.
Dean's eyes protested, felt like gravel lubricated them, but he couldn't keep them from opening.
The white paper bag in Sam's hand just was not right. The scent coming from inside it was both enticing and disgusting.
“What... what is that?”
Sam handed over the bag and waited for the verdict.
He didn't quite wince when Dean opened up the bag and then yelled. But he did think that Dean didn't have the throw it across the room, lack of sleep or not.
“A MCRIB? ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
Being taken to task didn't really make Sam that uncomfortable, soulless man, right? But his body shrugged in reflex.
“Dean, you wanted a barbecue sandwich. We're in Nebraska! Short of driving to Omaha, or Eustis, that's about all I could find this side of a three hour drive.”
“Dammit, Sammy, there's proof if I needed any. Only someone with no soul would think a McRib was a reasonable substitute for a barbecue poboy.”
It was ridiculous, how Sam still had the puppy eyes.
“Okay, forget the barbecue. A hamburger. And not a McPlastic Burger, either. There was a pancake house up the road about six miles, right? Bacon cheeseburger. Go.”
Dean half expected, no, more than half expected, his brother or what was left of him to protest but Sam simply stood up and headed for the door, picking up the discarded white bag and its contents on the way.
“Be right back.”
Dammit, he really was letting Dean call the shots. It was... it was weird.
Dean groaned once the door was shut and didn't even pretend not to kick his boots off and burrow against the pillows.
He practically dove for Missouri's parlor again, chasing that last dream.
Of course he ended up nowhere near Lawrence.
The church was an old one, well cared for if worn. It should have been in Blue Earth, Minnesota, but the last time Dean had been there, he'd found a different church, and a different pastor. Still a good man, but a good man chosen as the father of a Whore.
Maybe Pastor Jim's church had been abandoned, after its minister was found with his throat slit, in a basement weapons locker.
Dreams didn't care if places were gone, though. Dean walked up the aisle and settled in a pew, wondering what he had come for. God had many houses but he was every bit as much the absentee landlord as absentee father.
When a man walked up the aisle and settled in a pew behind Dean, he expected to hear Pastor's Jim's voice.
Instead of a voice, there was the familiar weight of a hand on his shoulder.
Dean spun in his seat as if he'd been electrocuted.
”DAD?!”
John Winchester's eyes met his son's, and damn if Dean hadn't wished for a dream like this a thousand times, wished and never gotten.
There were a hundred things he wanted to say, a million questions on his lips.
And of course, John stood up to leave.
His lips didn't move but his eyes held Dean's, nailed him to the spot.
Just save him, Dean.
Even the smell of a bacon cheeseburger couldn't get through the cloak of Morpheus this time. Sam placed the paper-wrapped sandwich on the dresser and settled into an armchair, ignoring his laptop. Maybe it was creepy, but he just wanted to watch Dean sleep. He was pleased that it had worked. He knew his brother needed sleep, Dean was only human, and lack of sleep was a health issue, not to mention it made his brother cranky, well, crankier. The dark circles under his eyes were not a good thing.
Sam didn't worry, any more than he felt afraid, but he did want things. He wanted Dean to be okay. It might be beyond his ability to make it happen, but it wasn't in Sam's nature to give up trying. To give up anything.
He'd miscalculated several times but one thing was clear. Sticking with Dean was the best choice. Samuel had disappointed him, proven Dean right, he wasn't John Winchester. Or maybe he was like him, deal with a demon. But it wasn't acceptable. They might have to work for Crowley until they had an angle, but the minute they did have one, that son of a bitch was going down.
It was soothing, to watch Dean sleep. Tiny movements of his eyes under their closed lids spoke of dreaming. If it started to look like nightmares, he'd jostle the bed enough to shift them. Dreams were important. If he couldn't have them, it was good that Dean did.
Dawn was coming.
12:51:01 PM
~
♦ other season 6 codas
Rating: PG
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.07
Notes: Coda to 6.07. Dean POV, with brief bit of Sam POV
This takes place in the space between what we know and what we don't. It is not intended to be accurate, just to be one possible take.
11/12/10 10:49:29 AM
These Dreams, Again
The fact of the matter was that Dean was exhausted. After finding out his brother was minus his soul, then getting side tracked by an Alpha Vampire hunt, only to discover that his formerly dead, resurrected grandfather not only did have his soul, but happened to be working - willingly - for the friggin King of the damn Crossroads... no, scratch that, the goddam King of Hell, for crap's sake!
Well, it left a guy a little tired.
Not to mention the fact that Dean hadn't really slept since he'd been turned into a frickin vampire himself, thanks to said soulless brother, and then turned back, which... that cure... he could honestly now say he'd ingested something that tasted fouler than goat's testicles, or whatever it was that Bear Grylls had immediately chucked back up in front of those Bedouin guys, who sure knew a sucker when they saw one coming.
So no sleep for, say, three days, and all the exercise a hunter in the middle of another damn evil clown apocalypse... no, in the middle of another frickin Winchester Family Crisis got.
So yeah. And his thoughts were starting to repeat in wide, slightly wobbly circles again.
The thing was, it was one thing to pull up to a motel and get a key for the night. Park his baby and drag ass into the room.
Locking the door, throwing up some basic protection... then taking a dive onto the nearest bed...
All under the thoughtful regard of the Boy Who Didn't Sleep.
Dean tried. Soul or no soul, it was Sam, Castiel said so, although all that mumbo jumbo about it being an interesting philosophical question was about ten blocks short of reassuring. As for RoboSam's repeated assurances that he wasn't going to do anything like that ever again... yeah, that could cause insomnia right there on its own.
But Dean did try. He let his eyes close. Tried not to listen to the soft sound of Sam cat-footing it around the room, then settling in a chair. The minute tap of fingers on laptop keyboard, falling intermittently silent while cool (yet somehow weirdly earnest) eyes devoured pages of text.
Dean was sitting up, glaring, no, staring pointedly, before he could stop himself.
Sam's head swiveled.
“What?”
Dean was so tired, he just failed at articulating anything.
Sam leaned back in the chair, with a perfect implication of a sigh.
“What, Dean? Go to sleep.”
“You go to sleep.” It was childish and petulant, and delivered in a growl that was still somehow helpless.
“I thought you didn't want me to lie.”
“Have you tried? I mean, really, Sam, have you tried to go to sleep?”
There was a short silence instead of a glib answer.
For a moment, Dean felt a funny tickle of hope. It wasn't rational, but his brain was so sleep deprived it was a miracle he wasn't seeing little pink elephants dancing through the room yet.
“Not really.” The implied sigh almost became an actual one. “I just don't feel like it.”
“You don't get tired?”
“No, Dean, I get tired. And I rest. But my...” Sam stopped short of a complete sentence.
“Your what?”
“My brain won't shut off.” Sam looked oddly apologetic. “It just won't.”
Dean thought about Sam's brain not shutting off for an entire. Year.
The shudder was visible.
“I could beat you unconscious again... how did that feel?” The growl was a lot more ragged and almost... eager, than Dean wanted to admit to himself.
Sam managed a bitchface. Funny, that he could do that without his soul.
“It hurt. So, no, I respectfully decline to let you bash my head in every night, okay?”
“Fine, whatever.” Dean tried to rub his eyes back open. It felt like he was grinding sand into them.
“Dean, go to sleep. You need sleep.”
There it was, that serious, almost gentle tone that almost sounded like real concern.
“My brain won't turn off either.”
“If you lay down, I bet it will.”
And of course, now it was like surrendering.
“I'm hungry.”
Sam got up and reached for one of their duffles.
“No, I don't want that two day old hoagie from whereever-it-was.” Petulant again, trying to sound gruff, and instead managing very very cranky.
Sam settled his hands on his hips.
“Okay, tell me what you want, and I'll go get it.”
Well that was almost a dilemma in itself, because part of Dean didn't like letting Sam out of his sight at the moment, and the other part knew the absence would be a relief. Which felt wrong.
After a yawn all but forced itself out, Dean growled and acceded.
“I want a barbecue sandwich. And no side trips, Sammy, you got it?”
“But...”
“But me no buts, you offered. Go. And make it quick, chop chop.”
There was a short moment, and Dean tried to ignore the flicker of calculation he thought he could see in eyes that apparently were his brother's, whatever might be missing behind them.
The moment the door closed behind Sam and the lock clicked, he was crashing, out before the bed springs had stopped protesting the gravity fueled body impact.
There were dreams, it was like they cranked up to ten every damn time, like he was dreaming for two people or something. At first there were the horrible ones he actually expected, all sharp teeth and loud sounds and Lisa's pale face, Ben's scared, betrayed look as he ran away.
There were bright, tingly moments straight from the Alpha Vamp's broadcast. There was a twisted moment in a dark old abandoned factory, of the Alpha's sharp fangs, but not on his own throat, and then red-eyed Sammy with a mouth full of white daggers, coming for him like the wind.
There was hell, in all its red splashed glory and then a twilit, gray place that reminded Dean of a cemetery in Chicago... Graceland, where that girl's statue was supposed to get out of its case and walk the grounds...
“Purgatory's not like that, you poor boy, I swear, Dean, sometimes I think you're a couple of pawns short of a chess set.”
Blinking, Dean rubbed the side of his head, sure he'd just gotten smacked.
He was standing in Missouri's parlor.
“Oh? Then what is it like, if you know so much?” And he didn't want to sound so stupid, didn't want to ask that question at all, but he couldn't be here, and neither could she.
Hands that were delicate but strong enough pushed him to sit on the divan.
“Of course you can be here, and so can I,” she said, settling into the high backed chair with the carved legs. “You're dreaming, you can be anywhere, with anyone. Now, ask me what you really wanted to. Ask me what you came to ask me. Cause you don't have much time, and I don't have all night either.”
The moment she said it, and no matter how uncomfortable the psychic always made him, suddenly Dean didn’t want to go anywhere, wanted to stay right here in the cozy room where it was, somehow he was certain, perhaps the only safe place in all creation.
Missouri leaned over and patted his knee lightly.
“Thank you for that, child. It's not true, but if I had that kind of power, I'd make it so for you and your brother. Now, ask me.”
Something blocked Dean's throat, something so big and tight that it hurt to swallow around it.
“Is... how can it be Sam... without a soul?”
The look she leveled at him was grave and he was prepared for anything, like It can't be!
He was even prepared to feel stupid, as usual. He just need to hear something, something more than that's an interesting philosophical question. Cas got all kinds of points for helping, but none for giving Dean one iota of reassurance on a human level.
“Well,” she said finally, and like her answers often did, it seemed to unravel carefully, like a deliberately knitted sweater taken apart to show how it was made.
“A soul's not like an eyeball, Dean,” and the macabre answer didn't seem at all out of place. “It doesn't just pop out of the socket. You can't just pop it right back in, either. Or maybe... maybe it is a little like an eyeball. As long as the nerves aren't severed, sometimes you can put it back after a trauma...” Her lips pressed together and she shook her head once from side to side.
“Are you saying... the nerves... were severed?” Always he felt stupid with her, but she didn't task him for it this time.
“I'm saying it wasn't a clean cut,” her eyes were dark, watching to see if he got it. “When something - an eye, a soul - is ripped out... it leaves something behind. Leaves pieces of what it was attached to...”
“Pieces... I don't understand,” and that was almost a husked cry.
“Dean!” and there was the exasperation. “Think! What's still around, what was Sam's soul attached to?”
And Dean could think of nothing... nothing...
“Boy, you make me want to hit you upside the head with a spoon...”
The sound of the motel door lock clicking and the door opening and closing dragged Dean away from Missouri's cozy parlor like a dog dragging a bone from a hole.
Dean's eyes protested, felt like gravel lubricated them, but he couldn't keep them from opening.
The white paper bag in Sam's hand just was not right. The scent coming from inside it was both enticing and disgusting.
“What... what is that?”
Sam handed over the bag and waited for the verdict.
He didn't quite wince when Dean opened up the bag and then yelled. But he did think that Dean didn't have the throw it across the room, lack of sleep or not.
“A MCRIB? ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
Being taken to task didn't really make Sam that uncomfortable, soulless man, right? But his body shrugged in reflex.
“Dean, you wanted a barbecue sandwich. We're in Nebraska! Short of driving to Omaha, or Eustis, that's about all I could find this side of a three hour drive.”
“Dammit, Sammy, there's proof if I needed any. Only someone with no soul would think a McRib was a reasonable substitute for a barbecue poboy.”
It was ridiculous, how Sam still had the puppy eyes.
“Okay, forget the barbecue. A hamburger. And not a McPlastic Burger, either. There was a pancake house up the road about six miles, right? Bacon cheeseburger. Go.”
Dean half expected, no, more than half expected, his brother or what was left of him to protest but Sam simply stood up and headed for the door, picking up the discarded white bag and its contents on the way.
“Be right back.”
Dammit, he really was letting Dean call the shots. It was... it was weird.
Dean groaned once the door was shut and didn't even pretend not to kick his boots off and burrow against the pillows.
He practically dove for Missouri's parlor again, chasing that last dream.
Of course he ended up nowhere near Lawrence.
The church was an old one, well cared for if worn. It should have been in Blue Earth, Minnesota, but the last time Dean had been there, he'd found a different church, and a different pastor. Still a good man, but a good man chosen as the father of a Whore.
Maybe Pastor Jim's church had been abandoned, after its minister was found with his throat slit, in a basement weapons locker.
Dreams didn't care if places were gone, though. Dean walked up the aisle and settled in a pew, wondering what he had come for. God had many houses but he was every bit as much the absentee landlord as absentee father.
When a man walked up the aisle and settled in a pew behind Dean, he expected to hear Pastor's Jim's voice.
Instead of a voice, there was the familiar weight of a hand on his shoulder.
Dean spun in his seat as if he'd been electrocuted.
”DAD?!”
John Winchester's eyes met his son's, and damn if Dean hadn't wished for a dream like this a thousand times, wished and never gotten.
There were a hundred things he wanted to say, a million questions on his lips.
And of course, John stood up to leave.
His lips didn't move but his eyes held Dean's, nailed him to the spot.
Just save him, Dean.
Even the smell of a bacon cheeseburger couldn't get through the cloak of Morpheus this time. Sam placed the paper-wrapped sandwich on the dresser and settled into an armchair, ignoring his laptop. Maybe it was creepy, but he just wanted to watch Dean sleep. He was pleased that it had worked. He knew his brother needed sleep, Dean was only human, and lack of sleep was a health issue, not to mention it made his brother cranky, well, crankier. The dark circles under his eyes were not a good thing.
Sam didn't worry, any more than he felt afraid, but he did want things. He wanted Dean to be okay. It might be beyond his ability to make it happen, but it wasn't in Sam's nature to give up trying. To give up anything.
He'd miscalculated several times but one thing was clear. Sticking with Dean was the best choice. Samuel had disappointed him, proven Dean right, he wasn't John Winchester. Or maybe he was like him, deal with a demon. But it wasn't acceptable. They might have to work for Crowley until they had an angle, but the minute they did have one, that son of a bitch was going down.
It was soothing, to watch Dean sleep. Tiny movements of his eyes under their closed lids spoke of dreaming. If it started to look like nightmares, he'd jostle the bed enough to shift them. Dreams were important. If he couldn't have them, it was good that Dean did.
Dawn was coming.
12:51:01 PM
~
♦ other season 6 codas