I thought you loved me more than this-Day 1 of 30 Days of Caroline-TVD/SPN
Title: I thought you loved me more than this
Series: 30 Days of Caroline
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Kripke owns SPN, Smith own TVD. I own this laptop. Obviously, they make more money than me.
Characters: Caroline/Sam Winchester
Summary: Companion piece to No Matter Above Or Below-Caroline measures the time it takes for her heart to shatter . . .
~0~
It takes her less than a second to know Dean is dead.
It’s nothing she hears, it’s nothing she sees.
It’s entirely in the way her heart stops, squeezes painfully in her chest and steals her breath, even when she is too far away to know what is happening.
She knows he is dead because she feels it; her bones know it.
And the tears come three days later.
It takes forty-five minutes to dig the grave.
She wouldn’t have been caught dead doing this four years ago. She wouldn’t have even dreamt of it, because of her manicure or her nail polish or her clothes. She would have yelled, pouted, and thrown a hissy fit until the shovel passed to the next person.
But, then again, no one would have thought to hand her a shovel four years ago.
Forty-five minutes and all she hears is the scrape of metal against rocks, the muffled grunts of labour from Uncle Bobby and Sam, and the soft thud of dirt hitting the ground.
It is the silence afterwards that is the loudest.
It takes two days for Sam to talk to her.
He does it at night, when they are locked tightly together on her bed, the thin walls barely enough of a barricade between them and the outside world. Uncle Bobby is down the hall, earplugs in because he’s her uncle and there are things that he doesn’t need to hear. Rumsfeld is right outside the door, standing guard against something that’s no longer coming because Dean is already dead.
Sam’s arms are locked around her waist and his face is pressed into the warm skin above her belly button. She is running her fingers through his hair, counting each puff of air across her ribcage as blessing in its own right.
Sam has cried his share of tears; hers are still coming. But his silence since that day, that moment, is more frightening than any amount of tears. The sound of his voice is so welcome, so desired, so needed, that she can’t help the way her heart starts thumping wildly upon hearing it.
He does not say much, only one word. But it’s the right word, the only one that matters.
His breath hitches and a sob seems caught in his throat. “C-Caroline.”
She takes it as a sign; she takes it as a miracle. She chooses silence in response, but slides down the bed and cups his face between her hands. A kiss, and it’s everything she cannot say and does not know how to say and every bit of understanding and every bit of confusion that she has.
She knows what he’s feeling; she also knows that she can’t understand it, because pain is pain, but each pain is different. And she had Uncle Bobby in the taking of her mother and Sam has no family left, just what he can take from her and her uncle and she doesn’t know if he has the strength to ask it of them.
There are tears on her face, tears that are not her own, but she says nothing as his hand travels down her back and his fingers hook themselves in the waistband of her pants.
She can say nothing, only act, because Sam doesn’t need to hear how she loves him so much that she would gladly die to keep him safe, to keep him alive, to keep him well.
Because someone has already died to keep Sam safe, alive, and well-but Dean’s too dead to help Sam stop feeling numb, grieved, and heartbroken.
She thinks, in the quiet after, that maybe she loves Sam enough to stay alive.
But she’s not sure.
It takes five words for Sam to rip out her heart.
“I’m going to save him.”
There’s supposed to be something after this. There’s supposed to be tears and shouts and pleas and many other things that are equally dramatic. Caroline’s watched every single teen movie on that planet and she knows a dramatic turning point when it presents itself.
But she also knows that Sam is serious, because he loves her and she loves him, but she can’t give him back Dean. No one can, and Sam refuses to see it.
“Idjit!” or something close to it leaves Uncle Bobby’s lips. Sam doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t stop looking at her like he needs her support, needs her condemnation, needs her reaction before he leaves.
She looks back, and she looks hard. The urge to kiss him is absurdly strong, but it always is.
She turns, instead, and leads Rumsfeld to his water bowl.
The door shuts seconds later, and Uncle Bobby is shouting curses from the porch.
She sits at the kitchen table, one hand on Rumsfeld head and one clutching the edge of the table. She thinks that she should be crying. She thinks she should be hysterical and distraught and many other things.
She’s actually just numb.
Uncle Bobby comes back into the house and stands in the kitchen doorway, watching her carefully. She takes a minute (maybe twenty) and then gets to her feet.
“Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”
It takes one phone call to piece them together again.
She wakes to the sound of Uncle Bobby cursing and attempting to smash the phone to pieces. She walks into the kitchen to find him seated at the table, a bottle of some very strong liquor in front of him. Rumsfeld whines from his spot at her side and Uncle Bobby can’t look at either of them.
“I’ll get the guns ready,” she offers, and leaves before he can call her back.
And then there is a Dean-like thing on their porch. It is so good at its imitation that even she wants to believe it. But faith is something reserved for her childhood now, and the shotgun is heavy in her hands. She wants to shoot this thing for trying to be the one thing that broke them, and the one thing that could fix them.
There’s a knife, a damn near bucketful of holy water, and suddenly her lack of faith is thrown back in her face.
She doesn’t really care, not while she cries into Dean’s shoulder. At that time, she thinks whatever price it was, the price might have been worth it.
She changes her mind, later.
It takes one motel room to ruin her life.
There’s a ‘sorry’ somewhere in the depths of Sam’s eyes, but all she can see is the half-naked girl running for some semblance of dignity.
She knows then that they will never be what they were trying to be before.
Caroline is still mourning when they all welcome Dean back to the living world.
Caroline will mourn so much more, in the year to come.
~0~
Series: 30 Days of Caroline
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Kripke owns SPN, Smith own TVD. I own this laptop. Obviously, they make more money than me.
Characters: Caroline/Sam Winchester
Summary: Companion piece to No Matter Above Or Below-Caroline measures the time it takes for her heart to shatter . . .
~0~
It takes her less than a second to know Dean is dead.
It’s nothing she hears, it’s nothing she sees.
It’s entirely in the way her heart stops, squeezes painfully in her chest and steals her breath, even when she is too far away to know what is happening.
She knows he is dead because she feels it; her bones know it.
And the tears come three days later.
It takes forty-five minutes to dig the grave.
She wouldn’t have been caught dead doing this four years ago. She wouldn’t have even dreamt of it, because of her manicure or her nail polish or her clothes. She would have yelled, pouted, and thrown a hissy fit until the shovel passed to the next person.
But, then again, no one would have thought to hand her a shovel four years ago.
Forty-five minutes and all she hears is the scrape of metal against rocks, the muffled grunts of labour from Uncle Bobby and Sam, and the soft thud of dirt hitting the ground.
It is the silence afterwards that is the loudest.
It takes two days for Sam to talk to her.
He does it at night, when they are locked tightly together on her bed, the thin walls barely enough of a barricade between them and the outside world. Uncle Bobby is down the hall, earplugs in because he’s her uncle and there are things that he doesn’t need to hear. Rumsfeld is right outside the door, standing guard against something that’s no longer coming because Dean is already dead.
Sam’s arms are locked around her waist and his face is pressed into the warm skin above her belly button. She is running her fingers through his hair, counting each puff of air across her ribcage as blessing in its own right.
Sam has cried his share of tears; hers are still coming. But his silence since that day, that moment, is more frightening than any amount of tears. The sound of his voice is so welcome, so desired, so needed, that she can’t help the way her heart starts thumping wildly upon hearing it.
He does not say much, only one word. But it’s the right word, the only one that matters.
His breath hitches and a sob seems caught in his throat. “C-Caroline.”
She takes it as a sign; she takes it as a miracle. She chooses silence in response, but slides down the bed and cups his face between her hands. A kiss, and it’s everything she cannot say and does not know how to say and every bit of understanding and every bit of confusion that she has.
She knows what he’s feeling; she also knows that she can’t understand it, because pain is pain, but each pain is different. And she had Uncle Bobby in the taking of her mother and Sam has no family left, just what he can take from her and her uncle and she doesn’t know if he has the strength to ask it of them.
There are tears on her face, tears that are not her own, but she says nothing as his hand travels down her back and his fingers hook themselves in the waistband of her pants.
She can say nothing, only act, because Sam doesn’t need to hear how she loves him so much that she would gladly die to keep him safe, to keep him alive, to keep him well.
Because someone has already died to keep Sam safe, alive, and well-but Dean’s too dead to help Sam stop feeling numb, grieved, and heartbroken.
She thinks, in the quiet after, that maybe she loves Sam enough to stay alive.
But she’s not sure.
It takes five words for Sam to rip out her heart.
“I’m going to save him.”
There’s supposed to be something after this. There’s supposed to be tears and shouts and pleas and many other things that are equally dramatic. Caroline’s watched every single teen movie on that planet and she knows a dramatic turning point when it presents itself.
But she also knows that Sam is serious, because he loves her and she loves him, but she can’t give him back Dean. No one can, and Sam refuses to see it.
“Idjit!” or something close to it leaves Uncle Bobby’s lips. Sam doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t stop looking at her like he needs her support, needs her condemnation, needs her reaction before he leaves.
She looks back, and she looks hard. The urge to kiss him is absurdly strong, but it always is.
She turns, instead, and leads Rumsfeld to his water bowl.
The door shuts seconds later, and Uncle Bobby is shouting curses from the porch.
She sits at the kitchen table, one hand on Rumsfeld head and one clutching the edge of the table. She thinks that she should be crying. She thinks she should be hysterical and distraught and many other things.
She’s actually just numb.
Uncle Bobby comes back into the house and stands in the kitchen doorway, watching her carefully. She takes a minute (maybe twenty) and then gets to her feet.
“Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”
It takes one phone call to piece them together again.
She wakes to the sound of Uncle Bobby cursing and attempting to smash the phone to pieces. She walks into the kitchen to find him seated at the table, a bottle of some very strong liquor in front of him. Rumsfeld whines from his spot at her side and Uncle Bobby can’t look at either of them.
“I’ll get the guns ready,” she offers, and leaves before he can call her back.
And then there is a Dean-like thing on their porch. It is so good at its imitation that even she wants to believe it. But faith is something reserved for her childhood now, and the shotgun is heavy in her hands. She wants to shoot this thing for trying to be the one thing that broke them, and the one thing that could fix them.
There’s a knife, a damn near bucketful of holy water, and suddenly her lack of faith is thrown back in her face.
She doesn’t really care, not while she cries into Dean’s shoulder. At that time, she thinks whatever price it was, the price might have been worth it.
She changes her mind, later.
It takes one motel room to ruin her life.
There’s a ‘sorry’ somewhere in the depths of Sam’s eyes, but all she can see is the half-naked girl running for some semblance of dignity.
She knows then that they will never be what they were trying to be before.
Caroline is still mourning when they all welcome Dean back to the living world.
Caroline will mourn so much more, in the year to come.
~0~