fic: the war is on your lips
Aha, so this is the long overdue (well, to me, anyway) Dean-POV to Dead End Signs and Wasted Land. I think it explains much, much more about what actually was happening to Sam, than Sam's POV did (because, well, that fic was Sam's perspective and the boy was confused as all get out, honestly). Anyway! This is what happens when I have no prompts or challenges due soon. I do things solely for my entertainment and - in the process - scar the reading audience. Oops :\
OMGWTF: unbeta'd; Dean-POV; gen; angst; abuse of religious ideas (seriously. the internet is awesome in a lot of wonderfully sacrilegious ways); references to Dean/OFC; unspecified timeline (sometime in s5, though).
required reading Dead End Signs and Wasted Land.
the war is on your lips
They were tired. That's what Dean tells himself when Sam's sleeping in the bed across from him. Back from limbo, or where the fuck ever he was. They were tired, still are, Sam only half here, no matter what he tells Dean.
More than three weeks, more than a month, and Dean hadn't known. It doesn't matter, he figured it out (wrong again, Winchester. Sam figured it out, left it out and open for you. Sam did). But his brother's here, now. That's all that matters.
They were tired. Hurt. They were trying to find their way back to being brothers and partners. Back to being hunters. It's not an excuse, it's just fact.
Sam was tired. Dean was tired.
Nothing else matters.
**
It starts after they finish up a case in Maryland. Some fuckin disgruntled animal spirit terrorizing the new management at a raw food plant in Temple Hills. Whatever, the damn ghost dog's big, black, and for a moment Dean's heart quits working (it's all right, Dean tells himself, a man can only adjust so well straight out of fuckin hell).
They have to dart around announcement boards hanging along the walkways, around industrial grade meat grinders before he traces the source to an urn in the former manager's office
He waits through the customary backlash and fury (force enough to blow out the floor-to-ceiling glass panes that overlook the worker zone. Sonic fuckin boom that leaves his ears ringing and firecrackers bursting every time he blinks. Fuckin spirits).
Doggy ashes. One tooth (thick and curved and resting against the bottom) left whole.
All it takes, then, is a race outside while Sam keeps the damn ghost-dog busy with iron rounds. Some salt, some lighter fluid, a match.
He hears the howl, one long, lonely cry and then it's over.
**
They clean up by rote. Dean's muscles ache from adrenaline, from running. He swears he can hear growls and snarls as he wipes the bottle of lighter fluid clean and stashes it in the trunk, but Sam's working beside him and he's fine. So Dean's fine; he is.
"Sam," he says, and his brother keeps slotting rounds into their boxes, scattered when Dean was busy hunting for something to burn the tooth. "Sam."
Here it is. Here is when Dean thinks he's tired, when Sam finally turns to look at him, hands idle, resting against the ege of the trunk. There's an odd sense of anticipation, and Dean doesn't know what to do with it, so he shrugs it off, says, "it's good. Let's go."
**
He drags Sam out to the bar in town, and halfway into round three he picks up a girl (blonde hair? Black? He can't remember, just knows she has full lips, soft, best thing about her) and takes her back to their room.
It's actually not that great - it's drunk sex, surprisingly awkward, but fuck if he's backing out now. He's finally got her moaning, trying to find a grip in the short hairs on the crown of his head, when Sam walks in.
The girl shrieks. Short, sharp jabs of pain to his head make him move, see the shape of Sam standing in the doorway like some serial killer from a slasher movie.
"The fuck?" But Sam just stares, and Dean doesn't see shock or disgust. It's blank, his look, and Dean pulls the sheets up, over the girl, and that movement seems to jolt Sam enough, but he doesn't leave, just skirts Dean's bed and lays down on his.
"Maybe, uh - "
"I'm fuckin going. Goddamn creeps." And the girl sweeps up her clothes from the side of the bed, squirms into them under the sheets. When she's dressed, she stands up, spits out "fuck you," and leaves, slamming the door behind her.
"Okay," he says when the windows finally quit rattling, "I shouldn't've left you hanging back there, Sam, but did you really have to scare her off?"
Sam doesn't respond, just stays flat on his back, hands clasped on his belly (and jesus, it's too much like Sam dying and deals and a kiss that burned Dean to the ground).
Dean falls face first into the pillow. It smells like sex and the girl's cheap perfume, but he can't move, doesn't really want to.
**
There's a cup of coffee sitting on his nightstand when he wakes up, some McCafe shit or something, he can smell the flavoring from here.
"What're you doing, Sam?" A rush of keys greets him, and he knows he'd see his brother's shoulders hunched, if he looked. Head down, bent over the keyboard. "Research?"
"Checking."
Silence, after that, and it gets Dean's hackles up, but Sam's shoulders are stiff to the point of breaking. He doesn't even tip his head or slide a glance at Dean when Dean moves around, purposefully loud and clumsy.
It freaks Dean out, and he slides John's journal free from its spot in his duffel bag. Takes it and his coffee into the bathroom and spends forty-five minutes fruitlessly searching for any kind of answer.
Sam never once knocks.
**
Looking back now, he doesn't know how he never noticed. They work case after case - small things that come back to back, and although the jobs aren't that dangerous, they don't get a break.
Until they cull the vampire nest in Idaho.
The nest isn't big, but the vampires are used to feeding unrestricted, and they're strong. Dean sets up a barricade of fire, forcing them to come through the only unimpeded opening - a small cleared path. It's too narrow for the vampires to fan out, try to attack, and when Dean and Sam going rushing at them, it's almost too easy.
When he looks over at Sam (gauging movement, keeping his brother in his eyeline, searching for blood and wounds) Sam's eyes are clear. Focused. When he meets Dean's, Dean sees recognition.
It shocks him, but he turns back to the remains of the nest, keeps his mouth shut tight against the splatter of thick, pungent blood every time another head is cut.
He'll figure it out later.
**
After they get back to the motel room, after showering, they sleep. Dean's last to come out the bathroom, and he sees Sam sprawled over his bed, deep asleep and so still that Dean's heart pounds crazily for a moment until Dean laughs it off.
They always crash hard after a big hunt. Nothing unusual.
He slides into sleep, and he dreams about screams, Sam begging. He sees his brother, reaches out, turns Sam around. "Look at me, Sammy."
When Sam's head lifts, his eye sockets are empty except for bright yellow pus, burn tracks like tears down his face. "Oh," Dean says. "You should have told me."
**
Dean wakes up angry. It's not new - dreams he barely remembers, or going to bed with Sam's silent form sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It's funny, now, how he's the one always accusing Sam of anger issues, when Dean's the one with a belly full of undirected rage churning and seething every time he stops moving.
But he's been furious or irritated or blind in one form or another since the convent, since loosing Lucifer on the world. Sam had tried talking, all that touchy-feely shit, and bonding - the whole nine yards. Tried until he must have finally realized how uninterested Dean actually was, because it stopped - finally and not soon enough.
Dean was just coming to the realization that Sam could die, like they were all probably going to die, and Dean would grieve, but he'd be able to live, to move on like he always should have been able to. Dean was dealing with that - feeling like he was betraying some grand, noble fuckin ideal or something - when Sam slid into silence, into brief looks and distance.
By the time Dean's able to get his head outta his ass and catches it, really starts thinking he understands just what Sam's quietness means, he's forgotten how to talk; how to look at his brother and see Sammy, and not some bent, twisted shadow in the Impala's passenger seat.
When Sam gasps, jerks upright quick and hard on their way out of Idaho, Dean almost spins the car off the road. When Sam asks, "are you real?" Dean's left gaping, scratching his head, until he snaps, "does that even make sense to you?"
Sam turns to stare at him, and Dean sees something insanely close to heartbreak reflected on his brother's face.
**
He finds the nearest motel room. Sam's back to being stiff and emotionless, and Dean calls Bobby, like he probably should have the first time he didn't feel right looking at Sam.
"Dammit, boy - " Bobby cuts himself off, but Dean winces anyway. "Tell me you - "
" - tested him every way I know how? Yeah, Bobby. I did."
"And you think - "
" - something's still wrong. Right. I mean - I mean, you haven't seen him, Bobby. Something's up, I just don't know what."
Dean wants to bang his head into the headboard of his bed, because he could've maybe headed this...thing...off if he'd just looked into it. But he hadn't wanted to - still doesn't want to learn any more of Sam's secrets, because the first one - it broke the world. What would another do?
"Alright, son. Tell me everything."
Dean recalls every moment over the past month, and he does it while staring at Sam's almost-but-not-really catatonic body.
**
"We just don't have much to go on, Dean." There's rustling over the line, a faint squeak of Bobby's old office chair. "I mean - I can't narrow it down when I don't have any information! Maybe - "
"I know he's my brother!" Bobby growls, either at the words or the umpteenth interruption, Dean's not sure. "I just can't figure out what's going on."
"Hey."
Dean spins at the croaked word, the painfully hoarse voice. His phone spins out of his hands, and he doesn't try fumbling for it, just rushes to Sam's bed. "Hey." It's weak, really weak, but his throat's dry, and now that he's looking, really looking, he can see the tight lines of Sam's face, the wariness. Jesus.
Sam.
"Where's my laptop?"
"What? Why - what's going on, Sam?"
"Shut up, Dean! I need my laptop."
Sam's looking around but not moving much, like things are too far away or too heavy, and Dean manages, "your bag, Sam. Like always."
His brother's single minded, and Dean waits while Sam's fingers fly over the keys, and when he finally, finally, gets what he apparently wants, his eyes light up for a minute. "De - "
It's eerie, then, because Sam doesn't collapse or lose consciousness, but Dean sees Sam fade away, leave the shuttered, empty shell Dean's grown accustomed to.
Holy shit.
He bends down, stark black lettering spiraling over a simple webpage, before the computer shuts down.
Limbo.
**
He calls Bobby back while trying to get Sam's laptop charging, so what Bobby hears when he picks up is, "...where the fuck is his goddamned adapter?"
"I don't know," and the low voice almost surprises Dean. "But I'm guessing that's not why you called me."
"Limbo, Bobby."
"What...?"
"Sam came back." Dean pauses in his search, straightens and looks at Sam's body. Ramrod straight, sitting on the very edge of his bed. "From wherever he was. He was in a hurry and he looked up 'limbo'."
"Right, well," there's a noise that Dean's come to associate with Bobby switching the receiver to his other ear. "We know what limbo is - the waiting area where a soul's fate is decided. The stop before purgatory."
"Sam's not dead."
He finds the adapter in a bundled up mess in the pocket of Sam's duffel and it takes a short lifetime to get it untangled and plugged in to the motel room's outlet. He gets Sam's computer booted, and the machine blinks and beeps at him, sticking at the start up page. "The fuck."
Bobby's muttering in his ear, and then snaps back to the conversation. "No, not dead. But limbo is the ultimate neutral ground. However, only the most powerful beings can access it, let alone take a living human there."
"But," he stops trying to navigate Sam's laptop. "It's been done, before? Reported cases of...humans being dragged to limbo?"
"Well, so they say. These reports aren't the most verifiable, or the most believable. But if we're going with this theory - it'd be God or Lucifer, Dean. The beings themselves. A champion could gain access, but would never be able to bring in something mortal. It'd be fatal."
"To the person?"
"To everything there. Bringing in something living is the antithesis of what that...realm...is supposed to be. It takes power, something on a level we couldn't even comprehend, to break the rules and survive."
"Okay." Okay, he thinks. Now what? "How do we get Sam out of there? It's pretty obvious Lucifer's holding onto him, right? God wouldn't pop into the picture just for this."
"Doesn't matter who has him, Dean. Limbo's about one thing." There's a pause. Dean doesn't know how to read it, but it's a definite, possibly doom-laden, pause. "Deciding. We're not gonna get him out, Dean. He has to confess."
"Or?"
"Or that denial maintains the hold over him. It's...the voluntary sin - what he's actively choosing or not admitting - that's making it harder to fight." More rustling. "For the dead, limbo is the holding pen, before judgement, before purgatory and hell or heaven. When the dead haven't revealed everything that could tip the scales one way or another, they're kept in limbo until the secret is exposed. According to accounts, guilt or obligation can keep a living mortal in limbo. Take away those things, and they're free to return to the land of the living...until they're sucked in again. If they're sucked in again."
"So...this is like Lucifer's last ditch effort?"
"And a pretty damn good one, too, I'd say." Bobby sighs, and it's like an onslaught of static, it's so long and so loud. "Best you can do is get it through to Sam, and hope he understands."
Dean knows what that means. This past year hasn't been good to them; Dean can't even face a hint of whatever Sam's been up to. Can't take his brother's guilt on top of his own.
Fuck.
**
He's ready, though. Kneeling beside Sam, waiting for any slight flicker of recognition to tell him his brother's present.
It comes with a gasp, a painful lunge for air, and Dean nearly screams, "it's sin, alright? Sammy, it's you - " he cuts off when Sam's eyes shutter, fall flat. "It's your denial." The words come out as a whisper, and he suddenly wants to touch, to feel Sam's breath come in anything besides the steady, instinctive pace it's currently in.
"Come on, Sam," he urges, leaning close to his brother's ear, letting the warmth of the words curl back toward his face. "You can do this."
**
It takes hours, days, years.
It's a matter of seconds. Sam blinks, and it's confused. Scared. "Hey," Dean says, staying bent low, scratching his fingers along Sam's scalp. Mindless, stupid comfort. "You stayin this time, Sammy?"
"Yeah," and it sounds like there should be wounds accompanying the sound; blood or something, Sam's voice sounds so raw. Dean watches Sam's eyes fall closed, like he's too exhausted to stay awake any longer.
Dean feels it like a thrill of fear down his spine. Wake up, wake up. Come back. But Sam's chest hitches unevenly; air whistles out of his slightly parted lips. Dean closes his eyes. It's fine, it's fine. Sam's here, and Dean knows - he'll do better, make sure Sam stays.
He leans in, feeling ridiculous and girly, and brushes his lips over Sam's eyelids. He feels the faint flutter of lashes against his mouth, and it's weird, but the sensation makes him feel - saner. Calmer.
"Good," he finally says to Sam's sleeping form. "You really should."
And here is a timestamp set sometime in the future of this 'verse: love me in this fable (warnings: explicit wincest, references to Lucifer/Sam, darkfic)
OMGWTF: unbeta'd; Dean-POV; gen; angst; abuse of religious ideas (seriously. the internet is awesome in a lot of wonderfully sacrilegious ways); references to Dean/OFC; unspecified timeline (sometime in s5, though).
required reading Dead End Signs and Wasted Land.
the war is on your lips
They were tired. That's what Dean tells himself when Sam's sleeping in the bed across from him. Back from limbo, or where the fuck ever he was. They were tired, still are, Sam only half here, no matter what he tells Dean.
More than three weeks, more than a month, and Dean hadn't known. It doesn't matter, he figured it out (wrong again, Winchester. Sam figured it out, left it out and open for you. Sam did). But his brother's here, now. That's all that matters.
They were tired. Hurt. They were trying to find their way back to being brothers and partners. Back to being hunters. It's not an excuse, it's just fact.
Sam was tired. Dean was tired.
Nothing else matters.
**
It starts after they finish up a case in Maryland. Some fuckin disgruntled animal spirit terrorizing the new management at a raw food plant in Temple Hills. Whatever, the damn ghost dog's big, black, and for a moment Dean's heart quits working (it's all right, Dean tells himself, a man can only adjust so well straight out of fuckin hell).
They have to dart around announcement boards hanging along the walkways, around industrial grade meat grinders before he traces the source to an urn in the former manager's office
He waits through the customary backlash and fury (force enough to blow out the floor-to-ceiling glass panes that overlook the worker zone. Sonic fuckin boom that leaves his ears ringing and firecrackers bursting every time he blinks. Fuckin spirits).
Doggy ashes. One tooth (thick and curved and resting against the bottom) left whole.
All it takes, then, is a race outside while Sam keeps the damn ghost-dog busy with iron rounds. Some salt, some lighter fluid, a match.
He hears the howl, one long, lonely cry and then it's over.
**
They clean up by rote. Dean's muscles ache from adrenaline, from running. He swears he can hear growls and snarls as he wipes the bottle of lighter fluid clean and stashes it in the trunk, but Sam's working beside him and he's fine. So Dean's fine; he is.
"Sam," he says, and his brother keeps slotting rounds into their boxes, scattered when Dean was busy hunting for something to burn the tooth. "Sam."
Here it is. Here is when Dean thinks he's tired, when Sam finally turns to look at him, hands idle, resting against the ege of the trunk. There's an odd sense of anticipation, and Dean doesn't know what to do with it, so he shrugs it off, says, "it's good. Let's go."
**
He drags Sam out to the bar in town, and halfway into round three he picks up a girl (blonde hair? Black? He can't remember, just knows she has full lips, soft, best thing about her) and takes her back to their room.
It's actually not that great - it's drunk sex, surprisingly awkward, but fuck if he's backing out now. He's finally got her moaning, trying to find a grip in the short hairs on the crown of his head, when Sam walks in.
The girl shrieks. Short, sharp jabs of pain to his head make him move, see the shape of Sam standing in the doorway like some serial killer from a slasher movie.
"The fuck?" But Sam just stares, and Dean doesn't see shock or disgust. It's blank, his look, and Dean pulls the sheets up, over the girl, and that movement seems to jolt Sam enough, but he doesn't leave, just skirts Dean's bed and lays down on his.
"Maybe, uh - "
"I'm fuckin going. Goddamn creeps." And the girl sweeps up her clothes from the side of the bed, squirms into them under the sheets. When she's dressed, she stands up, spits out "fuck you," and leaves, slamming the door behind her.
"Okay," he says when the windows finally quit rattling, "I shouldn't've left you hanging back there, Sam, but did you really have to scare her off?"
Sam doesn't respond, just stays flat on his back, hands clasped on his belly (and jesus, it's too much like Sam dying and deals and a kiss that burned Dean to the ground).
Dean falls face first into the pillow. It smells like sex and the girl's cheap perfume, but he can't move, doesn't really want to.
**
There's a cup of coffee sitting on his nightstand when he wakes up, some McCafe shit or something, he can smell the flavoring from here.
"What're you doing, Sam?" A rush of keys greets him, and he knows he'd see his brother's shoulders hunched, if he looked. Head down, bent over the keyboard. "Research?"
"Checking."
Silence, after that, and it gets Dean's hackles up, but Sam's shoulders are stiff to the point of breaking. He doesn't even tip his head or slide a glance at Dean when Dean moves around, purposefully loud and clumsy.
It freaks Dean out, and he slides John's journal free from its spot in his duffel bag. Takes it and his coffee into the bathroom and spends forty-five minutes fruitlessly searching for any kind of answer.
Sam never once knocks.
**
Looking back now, he doesn't know how he never noticed. They work case after case - small things that come back to back, and although the jobs aren't that dangerous, they don't get a break.
Until they cull the vampire nest in Idaho.
The nest isn't big, but the vampires are used to feeding unrestricted, and they're strong. Dean sets up a barricade of fire, forcing them to come through the only unimpeded opening - a small cleared path. It's too narrow for the vampires to fan out, try to attack, and when Dean and Sam going rushing at them, it's almost too easy.
When he looks over at Sam (gauging movement, keeping his brother in his eyeline, searching for blood and wounds) Sam's eyes are clear. Focused. When he meets Dean's, Dean sees recognition.
It shocks him, but he turns back to the remains of the nest, keeps his mouth shut tight against the splatter of thick, pungent blood every time another head is cut.
He'll figure it out later.
**
After they get back to the motel room, after showering, they sleep. Dean's last to come out the bathroom, and he sees Sam sprawled over his bed, deep asleep and so still that Dean's heart pounds crazily for a moment until Dean laughs it off.
They always crash hard after a big hunt. Nothing unusual.
He slides into sleep, and he dreams about screams, Sam begging. He sees his brother, reaches out, turns Sam around. "Look at me, Sammy."
When Sam's head lifts, his eye sockets are empty except for bright yellow pus, burn tracks like tears down his face. "Oh," Dean says. "You should have told me."
**
Dean wakes up angry. It's not new - dreams he barely remembers, or going to bed with Sam's silent form sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It's funny, now, how he's the one always accusing Sam of anger issues, when Dean's the one with a belly full of undirected rage churning and seething every time he stops moving.
But he's been furious or irritated or blind in one form or another since the convent, since loosing Lucifer on the world. Sam had tried talking, all that touchy-feely shit, and bonding - the whole nine yards. Tried until he must have finally realized how uninterested Dean actually was, because it stopped - finally and not soon enough.
Dean was just coming to the realization that Sam could die, like they were all probably going to die, and Dean would grieve, but he'd be able to live, to move on like he always should have been able to. Dean was dealing with that - feeling like he was betraying some grand, noble fuckin ideal or something - when Sam slid into silence, into brief looks and distance.
By the time Dean's able to get his head outta his ass and catches it, really starts thinking he understands just what Sam's quietness means, he's forgotten how to talk; how to look at his brother and see Sammy, and not some bent, twisted shadow in the Impala's passenger seat.
When Sam gasps, jerks upright quick and hard on their way out of Idaho, Dean almost spins the car off the road. When Sam asks, "are you real?" Dean's left gaping, scratching his head, until he snaps, "does that even make sense to you?"
Sam turns to stare at him, and Dean sees something insanely close to heartbreak reflected on his brother's face.
**
He finds the nearest motel room. Sam's back to being stiff and emotionless, and Dean calls Bobby, like he probably should have the first time he didn't feel right looking at Sam.
"Dammit, boy - " Bobby cuts himself off, but Dean winces anyway. "Tell me you - "
" - tested him every way I know how? Yeah, Bobby. I did."
"And you think - "
" - something's still wrong. Right. I mean - I mean, you haven't seen him, Bobby. Something's up, I just don't know what."
Dean wants to bang his head into the headboard of his bed, because he could've maybe headed this...thing...off if he'd just looked into it. But he hadn't wanted to - still doesn't want to learn any more of Sam's secrets, because the first one - it broke the world. What would another do?
"Alright, son. Tell me everything."
Dean recalls every moment over the past month, and he does it while staring at Sam's almost-but-not-really catatonic body.
**
"We just don't have much to go on, Dean." There's rustling over the line, a faint squeak of Bobby's old office chair. "I mean - I can't narrow it down when I don't have any information! Maybe - "
"I know he's my brother!" Bobby growls, either at the words or the umpteenth interruption, Dean's not sure. "I just can't figure out what's going on."
"Hey."
Dean spins at the croaked word, the painfully hoarse voice. His phone spins out of his hands, and he doesn't try fumbling for it, just rushes to Sam's bed. "Hey." It's weak, really weak, but his throat's dry, and now that he's looking, really looking, he can see the tight lines of Sam's face, the wariness. Jesus.
Sam.
"Where's my laptop?"
"What? Why - what's going on, Sam?"
"Shut up, Dean! I need my laptop."
Sam's looking around but not moving much, like things are too far away or too heavy, and Dean manages, "your bag, Sam. Like always."
His brother's single minded, and Dean waits while Sam's fingers fly over the keys, and when he finally, finally, gets what he apparently wants, his eyes light up for a minute. "De - "
It's eerie, then, because Sam doesn't collapse or lose consciousness, but Dean sees Sam fade away, leave the shuttered, empty shell Dean's grown accustomed to.
Holy shit.
He bends down, stark black lettering spiraling over a simple webpage, before the computer shuts down.
Limbo.
**
He calls Bobby back while trying to get Sam's laptop charging, so what Bobby hears when he picks up is, "...where the fuck is his goddamned adapter?"
"I don't know," and the low voice almost surprises Dean. "But I'm guessing that's not why you called me."
"Limbo, Bobby."
"What...?"
"Sam came back." Dean pauses in his search, straightens and looks at Sam's body. Ramrod straight, sitting on the very edge of his bed. "From wherever he was. He was in a hurry and he looked up 'limbo'."
"Right, well," there's a noise that Dean's come to associate with Bobby switching the receiver to his other ear. "We know what limbo is - the waiting area where a soul's fate is decided. The stop before purgatory."
"Sam's not dead."
He finds the adapter in a bundled up mess in the pocket of Sam's duffel and it takes a short lifetime to get it untangled and plugged in to the motel room's outlet. He gets Sam's computer booted, and the machine blinks and beeps at him, sticking at the start up page. "The fuck."
Bobby's muttering in his ear, and then snaps back to the conversation. "No, not dead. But limbo is the ultimate neutral ground. However, only the most powerful beings can access it, let alone take a living human there."
"But," he stops trying to navigate Sam's laptop. "It's been done, before? Reported cases of...humans being dragged to limbo?"
"Well, so they say. These reports aren't the most verifiable, or the most believable. But if we're going with this theory - it'd be God or Lucifer, Dean. The beings themselves. A champion could gain access, but would never be able to bring in something mortal. It'd be fatal."
"To the person?"
"To everything there. Bringing in something living is the antithesis of what that...realm...is supposed to be. It takes power, something on a level we couldn't even comprehend, to break the rules and survive."
"Okay." Okay, he thinks. Now what? "How do we get Sam out of there? It's pretty obvious Lucifer's holding onto him, right? God wouldn't pop into the picture just for this."
"Doesn't matter who has him, Dean. Limbo's about one thing." There's a pause. Dean doesn't know how to read it, but it's a definite, possibly doom-laden, pause. "Deciding. We're not gonna get him out, Dean. He has to confess."
"Or?"
"Or that denial maintains the hold over him. It's...the voluntary sin - what he's actively choosing or not admitting - that's making it harder to fight." More rustling. "For the dead, limbo is the holding pen, before judgement, before purgatory and hell or heaven. When the dead haven't revealed everything that could tip the scales one way or another, they're kept in limbo until the secret is exposed. According to accounts, guilt or obligation can keep a living mortal in limbo. Take away those things, and they're free to return to the land of the living...until they're sucked in again. If they're sucked in again."
"So...this is like Lucifer's last ditch effort?"
"And a pretty damn good one, too, I'd say." Bobby sighs, and it's like an onslaught of static, it's so long and so loud. "Best you can do is get it through to Sam, and hope he understands."
Dean knows what that means. This past year hasn't been good to them; Dean can't even face a hint of whatever Sam's been up to. Can't take his brother's guilt on top of his own.
Fuck.
**
He's ready, though. Kneeling beside Sam, waiting for any slight flicker of recognition to tell him his brother's present.
It comes with a gasp, a painful lunge for air, and Dean nearly screams, "it's sin, alright? Sammy, it's you - " he cuts off when Sam's eyes shutter, fall flat. "It's your denial." The words come out as a whisper, and he suddenly wants to touch, to feel Sam's breath come in anything besides the steady, instinctive pace it's currently in.
"Come on, Sam," he urges, leaning close to his brother's ear, letting the warmth of the words curl back toward his face. "You can do this."
**
It takes hours, days, years.
It's a matter of seconds. Sam blinks, and it's confused. Scared. "Hey," Dean says, staying bent low, scratching his fingers along Sam's scalp. Mindless, stupid comfort. "You stayin this time, Sammy?"
"Yeah," and it sounds like there should be wounds accompanying the sound; blood or something, Sam's voice sounds so raw. Dean watches Sam's eyes fall closed, like he's too exhausted to stay awake any longer.
Dean feels it like a thrill of fear down his spine. Wake up, wake up. Come back. But Sam's chest hitches unevenly; air whistles out of his slightly parted lips. Dean closes his eyes. It's fine, it's fine. Sam's here, and Dean knows - he'll do better, make sure Sam stays.
He leans in, feeling ridiculous and girly, and brushes his lips over Sam's eyelids. He feels the faint flutter of lashes against his mouth, and it's weird, but the sensation makes him feel - saner. Calmer.
"Good," he finally says to Sam's sleeping form. "You really should."
And here is a timestamp set sometime in the future of this 'verse: love me in this fable (warnings: explicit wincest, references to Lucifer/Sam, darkfic)