Goodnight Moon
Title: Goodnight Moon (Moon)
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam/Dean
Prompt: 045. Moon
Word Count: 3,526
Rating: PG-13 / R for adult themes and insinuated/stated slash/incest. And a quick kiss.
Author's Notes / Disclaimerish Text: It’s fiction. About fictitious persons! Credit the WB11, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles for such wonderful, believable, realistic (and sexy) characters. They don’t belong to me, not the characters nor the actors though I’d gladly take all of them if I could. *L* This is heavily angsty, written from Sam’s POV. Also, un-betae'd, and cross-posted.
POV: Sam Winchester
Spoilers: for Episode One of the Second Season. Spoilers based on still photos I’ve seen. So part of this is guesswork, part of it is spoilery. You’ve been warned.
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Goodnight Moon
Help comes fast after the crash. They say I called from my cell phone. I don’t remember.
Dad’s taken away on a stretcher while I sit in the grass, legs extended straight out in front of me. All I can see is illuminated by the light of the full moon-it’s not much. The driver of the semi is dead-was dead on impact they say. I think he might have been dead before the impact, but nobody would believe that.
I jump when a tall, auburn-haired woman with a paramedics badge touches my shoulder, asks if I’m okay, if I need any medical attention. I shake my head, dully. My head’s just starting to clear.
She doesn’t believe me, waves over another medic.
“…my brother…” I whisper finally. “My brother… where’s my brother…”
“Diana! Diana, come over here, we got another one.” The voice is loud, carries harshly through the dark and comes from behind me. It’s a male voice. The redhead at my side pats my shoulder and leaves. The medic she waved over kneels in the grass next to me and reaches under my shirt to press something cold to my chest. I breathe when he tells me to, but ignore him when he tells me not to move. I’m already twisting around to look behind me.
I shift enough to see when Diana-the redhead, I think that’s Diana-takes the stethoscope from her ears and shakes her head slowly, releasing the pale wrist of someone who’s covered in blood. It has to be Dean.
She stands up and comes back towards me. I hold a hand out towards the bloody lump on the ground, half in and half out the back of the totaled Impala. “…Dean…”
Diana kneels next to me and shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
I can see she is, her eyes have seen too much pain on this job, too much death and too much suffering. I shake my head, and I’m panicking. “No! NO!” I push people away from me in my rush to get to Dean, slipping/sliding/crawling to his side on my hands and knees in the tall, dark grass.
Diana’s behind me still, her hand warm and comforting in a way I don’t want between my shoulders. I shrug. “Get off of me!” I’m already reaching around Dean’s neck, feeling for a pulse through blood and shredded skin. My mouth is on his before I even find a heartbeat, and I take to beating on his chest when I get no response. “No, no, no! Come on, Dean!”
“Honey… I’m sorry. Really… But… he’s dead, honey.” It’s Diana again, her fingers tapping along my shoulders.
“No! He’s not dead! He can’t be dead!” I beat against Dean’s chest, not caring that I’m completely losing it on the side of the road. Dean would never let me live this down. He won’t ever let me live this down. He’s not dead.
When my shoulders slump forward, and my head hits my knees, Diana waves over help to lift me onto a stretcher and carry me away. They’re closing the door to the ambulance, lights flashing and sirens blaring, when I hear a voice calling from the still body of my brother-quiet, getting louder-“He’s… he’s alive… Oh my God, hurry up! I’ve got a pulse!”
* * *
They treat me in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital. I pass out on the stretcher before I can ask about Dean, and when I wake up, I’m in a bed surrounded by curtains. I push the curtains aside, tear the IV from my arm, and stand on shaky legs.
My clothes are in a chair near foot of the bed, inside the curtain, and I put them on before stumbling out to the nurses station, past an old man in the bed next to mine who looks to be at his last breath.
A doctor stops me halfway to the desk. “Mr. Winchester? Sam Winchester?”
They have our real names.
“John… where’s my father?” I grip the doctor’s arm without thinking. Then, “Dean… Dean. Where’s my brother, Dean!”
They take me to see dad first-he’s sitting up in bed. He’s got a broken arm, a couple scratches, stitches and heavy bandaging on the gunshot wound in his leg. Doctors say he’ll walk with a limp the rest of his life. Dad and I don’t believe them for a second.
I sit in a chair at dad’s side. “It’s good to see you alive, son.”
“Yeah… you too, dad.”
“They tell you where Dean is?” Dad’s too cool, too collected. Just like always, the thick skin of a hunter. It bothers me. Always has, always will. Dean’s his good little soldier, but Dean’s also his son.
I watch carefully for any reaction when I tell him “Dean’s… here. They thought he was dead first… but…” I don’t know anything else. I remember hearing someone yelling he was alive at the scene as they took me away, but the doctor here didn’t tell me anything other than that Dean was here.
“Have you seen him?”
I shake my head, cast my eyes down at the tiled floor. “Not yet.”
“We’ll go see him now.”
There’s no arguing with dad. We go. Dad in a wheelchair, me pushing him down sterile halls to the ICU. The doctor lets us both in.
My hand flies to my mouth and I suck in a breath that’s painful, lodges in my throat and threatens tears to fall from my eyes though I’ll never admit it and I won’t let dad see it.
Dean lies completely motionless on a thin, high bed, and there’s too many tubes and wires going into and out of his body for me to even guess at what half of them do. There’s bandaging peeking out from the white hospital gown they’ve tied around him, and there’s a thick blue and white plastic tube crossing over his face, a thinner tube parting his lips and disappearing into his mouth, his throat. His eyes are closed and there’s a harsh red mark of stitches and dried blood down the center of his forehead, splitting the pale skin of his face. Even his lips look dark, stand out against the pallor of his skin.
Dad wheels himself closer to Dean’s bedside. I’m already halfway out the door. I can’t be here, can’t see my brother like this, even though I know he needs me, needs to see me when he opens his eyes-when, not if. I refuse to believe anything less than that Dean will wake up. He’ll wake up. He has to.
I fall into a rigid plastic chair that’s seen better days, legs shaking and weak and unable to support me beyond getting me out of the ICU, and fall into tears. I can’t let dad see me this way, and I’ll be damned if I let Dean wake up to see me this way.
I’m aware of someone sitting down next to me, a hand coming to gently rub my shoulders, along the heavy cotton covering my back. I look up to see Diana, and manage a weak smile. “H… hey.”
“They won’t let you in to see him?” She asks, nodding towards the room that holds my too-still, too-pale, not breathing and too close to death brother.
I swallow. “No… no, they… let me in. My… our… dad’s in there now. I… I…” How do I tell her that I can’t be in there? Can’t be with him even when I know he needs me? Can’t be with him even when the only thing I want is to see him wake up, be there when he finally opens his eyes.
It’s Dean. He’s always been larger than life. To see him this way, kept alive by machines and medicine and threads too thin to see and touch… It hurts, more than anything else. And I thought he was dead. And seeing him this way, it’s getting harder and harder to believe he’s not, because… that body lying there in that bed… it’s not Dean. It’s not my brother.
“It’s hard.” She offers sympathetically, and when I nod, “…to see him that way. I know. I had a brother too.” She says. “He… spent a month like that, before we let him go. We had to.”
I look at her. “We’re not letting him go. He’s not leaving us.” I say stubbornly. I have to hold on to that, and I try to, even though there’s a part of me that whispers in the back of my mind that he won’t wake up, that I’m never going to see his green eyes again, that I’m never going to see his smile, never going to hear him call me ‘bitch’, never going to be able to tell him ‘it’s Sam’, again when he calls me Sammy. I’d give anything to hear him call me Sammy right now.
The door opens as Diana stands up, her hand on my knee, where I don’t want it. She pats it. “Just… be aware that… you might have to say goodbye one day.”
“No.” I mutter. “Not. Saying. Goodbye.”
She’s gone though, and it’s Dad who’s there, in his wheelchair as the door clangs shut behind him. “He’s not doing too well, son.”
I nod, frantically swallowing and biting back tears, getting myself under control. I’m pretty sure dad doesn’t see a single tear, on my cheek or in my eyes. He is stoic and brave, cold as always. I don’t think he’s cried since we lost mom. I wonder if he’s capable anymore.
“You should…” Dad’s voice again, low and serious as always.
“No.” I stand up and push past him, stand behind the chair with my back to it. I can’t look at dad, knowing he’s going to tell me I should go say goodbye to Dean, because that’s all I might have time to do, before the tubes and wires and machines breathing and living for him aren’t enough, and I don’t have the chance anymore. “I’m not saying goodbye, dad.”
I don’t give him a chance to answer, just open the door to the ICU and let it slam behind me. I don’t remember walking the few feet to my brother’s bedside, but I’m suddenly there, hands balled into tight fists at my sides. I have to take a breath and force myself to relax, unclench my hands. I bite my lower lip to the point of pain, squeeze my eyes halfway shut to ward off tears.
The moon is bright outside the barred window, and I stare at it, reminded of nights spent as a child in a room behind a barred window in a bad section of town, with only my older brother, books, weapons and a stuffed bunny to keep me company.
“Goodnight, moon.” I whisper quietly. Dean used to read me that story when I couldn’t sleep. We’d say goodnight then, to everything in the room-my stuffed bunny and the picture of mom that got lost somewhere in our travels… the chair and Dean and myself. If the moon was out, we’d say goodnight when Dean turned out the light.
“Goodnight, Sammy.” I whisper finally, still staring at the moon. But it doesn’t make me feel better. If anything, it makes me feel worse. It’s not Dean’s voice, doesn’t even sound like it, not then as a child, not now as an adult. It’s just my voice, sad and empty. “Goodnight, Dean.” I whisper, turning around towards the door to leave.
I walk past the bed and put a hand on the metal doorknob. I turn it slowly, it clicks softly. Even that soft sound echoes loudly in the quiet room.
“Goodnight moon.”
It’s Dean’s voice, so soft it could be a whisper. I spin fast enough to give me whiplash, my head snapping around to stare at Dean, eyes wide.
Dean is unchanged from moments ago. I don’t know what I was expecting. A miracle, maybe, for those green eyes to open and for him to smile and call me a bitch, laugh at the tears, because he’d see them no matter how hard I tried to hold them back. A joke to come from his lips, that this is nothing, he’s been through worse.
But he hasn’t.
I haven’t.
I can’t do this without him. I can’t think about what my life might be like without him-don’t want to-he’s always been there. I won’t have a life without him.
* * *
Two days later, I force myself to go back to Dean’s room after leaving and not looking back. He’s still as I left him-pale and unmoving, and the doctors don’t think he’ll wake up. Dad said goodbye already, and he wanted to talk to me about going after the demon again, this time about going after “the demon who did this. Who took mom, and Dean from us.”
He told the doctors to take Dean off life support, to let him go. The tubes are recently removed from his mouth, some of the wires are missing. Dean looks peaceful. He doesn’t look dead. The machine still beeps, the television monitor still shows a heartbeat, weak but regular. Doctors say he’ll still have a pulse, he’ll live for a few minutes without help, but he’ll taper off slow and then he’ll be gone.
I want to say what I have to say and be gone before the machine hits flatline. I can’t be here for when Dean takes his last breath-if he’s even breathing now… his chest doesn’t seem to be moving at all-can’t see his heart beat it’s last.
I can’t go after the demon without Dean. I can’t keep living this life without him. I’m not sure I can keep living without him. He’s been father and friend, brother and lover at different times in my life. He’s always been what I needed, when I needed it. He’s loved me unconditionally, he’s saved my life countless times, never tires of caring for me. He puts me before himself. Always. This life without Dean… life without Dean. I can’t think about it.
My fingers find the soft cotton of his bedcovers, and I pinch and wrinkle the cloth between them, staring at my fingers, at the white cloth until my vision blurs. “So uh… Dean… bro… y’know… Dad’s all gung ho about going after this thing… already came in here and said his goodbyes. I guess he’s leaving soon.” I’m choking on the words, but I can’t stop talking. I roll my eyes skyward and swallow harshly. “Said uh… said I should be going with him… that we’ll get it together.”
I scuff the floor with worn boots, stare down at my feet. “Ahh… I guess uh… ahh… Jesus, Dean… I can’t do this…”
“Y’know, dad said you broke down and bawled like a baby.”
My eyes snap up, not believing I just heard what I did. So soft it could have been my imagination-it’s something Dean would say. But I could swear I heard Dean’s voice, teasing and light, but hoarse, like he hadn’t spoken in some time. I shake my head. I’m hearing things. Imagining things. I’m going crazy, just like I thought I would if I ever lost Dean.
“Dean?” I lean in, peer closely at his lips, his face, his eyes. He’s utterly still, not a sign of life. I shake my head again when I get no answer, stand up straight. “Yeah… look… um… We’ll salt and burn your bones…” I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Like you… like you wanted…” It’s getting harder and harder to talk. My heart’s crawled up into my throat, and the tears burn in my eyes. I can’t see-everything’s blurred. I’m saying goodbye to my brother. I’m saying goodbye to Dean, something I swore I’d never do again after leaving him for college.
“Jesus… I… I can’t…” I pull a chair up and sink into it before my knees give out and my legs crumble and I fall to the floor. I’m that weak, that shaky. My hands tremble against the bedcovers. This isn’t happening.
I close my eyes, whisper in my head that I’m not going to cry.
“It’s okay y’know. We know you’re a chick at heart.”
I can almost see him, looking sidelong from under half-closed eyes at me, like he did after electrocuting himself and waking up in the hospital, talking in that low, joking voice he uses when he’s saying something he means but needs to cover it up because he’s Dean, and he’d never really say such things.
He hasn’t moved though, hasn’t spoken, hasn’t breathed.
“Goodnight moon.” I say, staring over Dean’s body out the window. It’s dark, the moon isn’t full anymore, it’s waning, slowly, ebbing away like Dean is.
“I used to read you that story. Years ago. You remember?”
“Yeah… yeah, I remember.” I answer. I must be going crazy, having a conversation with my dead-no, dying… not dead yet-brother. I look down at him, slide my hand across the mattress until it’s touching his. He’s still warm, his skin is still soft. He still feels alive. I take his hand without really thinking, winding my fingers through his one last time, remembering in flashes nights spent in bed with him, from as young and as far back as I can remember until nights just recently until we met up with dad again.
“Goodnight… Dean.” I choke out quietly. I can’t say goodbye, but I can say goodnight. It’s not as… final. Because in the morning, there will be sun again, and maybe Dean will smile and his eyes will open.
And there it is. Movement, so small, so faint it’s barely noticeable, but it’s there. It’s Dean’s fingers, moving in my hand, and this time, when I hear “Goodnight moon”, it’s Dean’s voice, raspy and weak, but it’s real, and Dean’s alive.
“Dean?” I slide off the chair to my knees, until I can look over the edge of the bed, my face even with his. “Dean?” My voice breaks on his name the second time, and I can’t hold back the tears that burn their way down my cheeks.
His fingers move again in mine.
“Dean… Dean… please… can you open your eyes?” I don’t care that he’s going to call me a girl, don’t care that I’m never going to live this down.
“Hey, bitch.” His lips curl up in a half-smile, and as I move even closer, to stare down into his eyes, they flutter, flicker open. They’re sick and dark and emptier than I’ve ever seen them, but they’re open, and there’s life where there wasn’t any before.
“Jerk.” I whisper, and that’s it. I’m sucking in air to keep from breaking down completely, and I glance over my shoulder, just to see if the blinds on the window are open. They’re not. Dad can’t see. The doctors can’t see. At least only Dean can make fun of me for this.
I lift his hand, mindful of the IV line that still runs into his skin, kiss his knuckles.
“It’s okay, you know.” Dean says quietly.
“Hmmm?” I don’t trust my voice to keep from cracking, don’t trust myself to keep the tears at bay.
“I’ll forgive you, this once.” He turns his eyes only to look down at me, still too weak to move anything more than his fingers it seems. “…if you’re going to break down and cry like a bitch.”
I lift my other hand to swipe across my eyes, and manage a smile before the tears come in earnest. My voice somehow manages to stay steady. “I thought I lost you, Dean… I thought… I thought this was it, y’know?”
He doesn’t answer, just squeezes my hand harder.
I want to tell him I love him, but I don’t. I can hear the doctors beyond the door, they’re coming in. Apparently the machines that are still hooked up to Dean let them know he woke up, that he’s alive. I lean up and kiss him quickly though, a press of my lips to his that says ‘I love you’ better than words, I hope.
“Yeah… me, too, Sammy.” He whispers, and I sink back into the chair as he squeezes my hand once more and doctors swarm around us. Dad stands in the door. He just watches. “Me, too.”
He lets go my hand when the doctors ask him to, let them run their tests, take blood and check his vitals. They call it a miracle. Dean and I call it brotherhood, and that night, when Dad’s resting, I read Dean Goodnight Moon, and we both say it at the same time. “Goodnight, dad.”
“Goodnight Dean.” I say, still smiling.
“Goodnight, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is still weak and raspy, but he sounds better all the time, his breathing gets easier and his color returns with every breath.
And in unison once again, “Goodnight, moon.”
~ fin ~
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Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam/Dean
Prompt: 045. Moon
Word Count: 3,526
Rating: PG-13 / R for adult themes and insinuated/stated slash/incest. And a quick kiss.
Author's Notes / Disclaimerish Text: It’s fiction. About fictitious persons! Credit the WB11, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles for such wonderful, believable, realistic (and sexy) characters. They don’t belong to me, not the characters nor the actors though I’d gladly take all of them if I could. *L* This is heavily angsty, written from Sam’s POV. Also, un-betae'd, and cross-posted.
POV: Sam Winchester
Spoilers: for Episode One of the Second Season. Spoilers based on still photos I’ve seen. So part of this is guesswork, part of it is spoilery. You’ve been warned.
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Goodnight Moon
Help comes fast after the crash. They say I called from my cell phone. I don’t remember.
Dad’s taken away on a stretcher while I sit in the grass, legs extended straight out in front of me. All I can see is illuminated by the light of the full moon-it’s not much. The driver of the semi is dead-was dead on impact they say. I think he might have been dead before the impact, but nobody would believe that.
I jump when a tall, auburn-haired woman with a paramedics badge touches my shoulder, asks if I’m okay, if I need any medical attention. I shake my head, dully. My head’s just starting to clear.
She doesn’t believe me, waves over another medic.
“…my brother…” I whisper finally. “My brother… where’s my brother…”
“Diana! Diana, come over here, we got another one.” The voice is loud, carries harshly through the dark and comes from behind me. It’s a male voice. The redhead at my side pats my shoulder and leaves. The medic she waved over kneels in the grass next to me and reaches under my shirt to press something cold to my chest. I breathe when he tells me to, but ignore him when he tells me not to move. I’m already twisting around to look behind me.
I shift enough to see when Diana-the redhead, I think that’s Diana-takes the stethoscope from her ears and shakes her head slowly, releasing the pale wrist of someone who’s covered in blood. It has to be Dean.
She stands up and comes back towards me. I hold a hand out towards the bloody lump on the ground, half in and half out the back of the totaled Impala. “…Dean…”
Diana kneels next to me and shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
I can see she is, her eyes have seen too much pain on this job, too much death and too much suffering. I shake my head, and I’m panicking. “No! NO!” I push people away from me in my rush to get to Dean, slipping/sliding/crawling to his side on my hands and knees in the tall, dark grass.
Diana’s behind me still, her hand warm and comforting in a way I don’t want between my shoulders. I shrug. “Get off of me!” I’m already reaching around Dean’s neck, feeling for a pulse through blood and shredded skin. My mouth is on his before I even find a heartbeat, and I take to beating on his chest when I get no response. “No, no, no! Come on, Dean!”
“Honey… I’m sorry. Really… But… he’s dead, honey.” It’s Diana again, her fingers tapping along my shoulders.
“No! He’s not dead! He can’t be dead!” I beat against Dean’s chest, not caring that I’m completely losing it on the side of the road. Dean would never let me live this down. He won’t ever let me live this down. He’s not dead.
When my shoulders slump forward, and my head hits my knees, Diana waves over help to lift me onto a stretcher and carry me away. They’re closing the door to the ambulance, lights flashing and sirens blaring, when I hear a voice calling from the still body of my brother-quiet, getting louder-“He’s… he’s alive… Oh my God, hurry up! I’ve got a pulse!”
* * *
They treat me in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital. I pass out on the stretcher before I can ask about Dean, and when I wake up, I’m in a bed surrounded by curtains. I push the curtains aside, tear the IV from my arm, and stand on shaky legs.
My clothes are in a chair near foot of the bed, inside the curtain, and I put them on before stumbling out to the nurses station, past an old man in the bed next to mine who looks to be at his last breath.
A doctor stops me halfway to the desk. “Mr. Winchester? Sam Winchester?”
They have our real names.
“John… where’s my father?” I grip the doctor’s arm without thinking. Then, “Dean… Dean. Where’s my brother, Dean!”
They take me to see dad first-he’s sitting up in bed. He’s got a broken arm, a couple scratches, stitches and heavy bandaging on the gunshot wound in his leg. Doctors say he’ll walk with a limp the rest of his life. Dad and I don’t believe them for a second.
I sit in a chair at dad’s side. “It’s good to see you alive, son.”
“Yeah… you too, dad.”
“They tell you where Dean is?” Dad’s too cool, too collected. Just like always, the thick skin of a hunter. It bothers me. Always has, always will. Dean’s his good little soldier, but Dean’s also his son.
I watch carefully for any reaction when I tell him “Dean’s… here. They thought he was dead first… but…” I don’t know anything else. I remember hearing someone yelling he was alive at the scene as they took me away, but the doctor here didn’t tell me anything other than that Dean was here.
“Have you seen him?”
I shake my head, cast my eyes down at the tiled floor. “Not yet.”
“We’ll go see him now.”
There’s no arguing with dad. We go. Dad in a wheelchair, me pushing him down sterile halls to the ICU. The doctor lets us both in.
My hand flies to my mouth and I suck in a breath that’s painful, lodges in my throat and threatens tears to fall from my eyes though I’ll never admit it and I won’t let dad see it.
Dean lies completely motionless on a thin, high bed, and there’s too many tubes and wires going into and out of his body for me to even guess at what half of them do. There’s bandaging peeking out from the white hospital gown they’ve tied around him, and there’s a thick blue and white plastic tube crossing over his face, a thinner tube parting his lips and disappearing into his mouth, his throat. His eyes are closed and there’s a harsh red mark of stitches and dried blood down the center of his forehead, splitting the pale skin of his face. Even his lips look dark, stand out against the pallor of his skin.
Dad wheels himself closer to Dean’s bedside. I’m already halfway out the door. I can’t be here, can’t see my brother like this, even though I know he needs me, needs to see me when he opens his eyes-when, not if. I refuse to believe anything less than that Dean will wake up. He’ll wake up. He has to.
I fall into a rigid plastic chair that’s seen better days, legs shaking and weak and unable to support me beyond getting me out of the ICU, and fall into tears. I can’t let dad see me this way, and I’ll be damned if I let Dean wake up to see me this way.
I’m aware of someone sitting down next to me, a hand coming to gently rub my shoulders, along the heavy cotton covering my back. I look up to see Diana, and manage a weak smile. “H… hey.”
“They won’t let you in to see him?” She asks, nodding towards the room that holds my too-still, too-pale, not breathing and too close to death brother.
I swallow. “No… no, they… let me in. My… our… dad’s in there now. I… I…” How do I tell her that I can’t be in there? Can’t be with him even when I know he needs me? Can’t be with him even when the only thing I want is to see him wake up, be there when he finally opens his eyes.
It’s Dean. He’s always been larger than life. To see him this way, kept alive by machines and medicine and threads too thin to see and touch… It hurts, more than anything else. And I thought he was dead. And seeing him this way, it’s getting harder and harder to believe he’s not, because… that body lying there in that bed… it’s not Dean. It’s not my brother.
“It’s hard.” She offers sympathetically, and when I nod, “…to see him that way. I know. I had a brother too.” She says. “He… spent a month like that, before we let him go. We had to.”
I look at her. “We’re not letting him go. He’s not leaving us.” I say stubbornly. I have to hold on to that, and I try to, even though there’s a part of me that whispers in the back of my mind that he won’t wake up, that I’m never going to see his green eyes again, that I’m never going to see his smile, never going to hear him call me ‘bitch’, never going to be able to tell him ‘it’s Sam’, again when he calls me Sammy. I’d give anything to hear him call me Sammy right now.
The door opens as Diana stands up, her hand on my knee, where I don’t want it. She pats it. “Just… be aware that… you might have to say goodbye one day.”
“No.” I mutter. “Not. Saying. Goodbye.”
She’s gone though, and it’s Dad who’s there, in his wheelchair as the door clangs shut behind him. “He’s not doing too well, son.”
I nod, frantically swallowing and biting back tears, getting myself under control. I’m pretty sure dad doesn’t see a single tear, on my cheek or in my eyes. He is stoic and brave, cold as always. I don’t think he’s cried since we lost mom. I wonder if he’s capable anymore.
“You should…” Dad’s voice again, low and serious as always.
“No.” I stand up and push past him, stand behind the chair with my back to it. I can’t look at dad, knowing he’s going to tell me I should go say goodbye to Dean, because that’s all I might have time to do, before the tubes and wires and machines breathing and living for him aren’t enough, and I don’t have the chance anymore. “I’m not saying goodbye, dad.”
I don’t give him a chance to answer, just open the door to the ICU and let it slam behind me. I don’t remember walking the few feet to my brother’s bedside, but I’m suddenly there, hands balled into tight fists at my sides. I have to take a breath and force myself to relax, unclench my hands. I bite my lower lip to the point of pain, squeeze my eyes halfway shut to ward off tears.
The moon is bright outside the barred window, and I stare at it, reminded of nights spent as a child in a room behind a barred window in a bad section of town, with only my older brother, books, weapons and a stuffed bunny to keep me company.
“Goodnight, moon.” I whisper quietly. Dean used to read me that story when I couldn’t sleep. We’d say goodnight then, to everything in the room-my stuffed bunny and the picture of mom that got lost somewhere in our travels… the chair and Dean and myself. If the moon was out, we’d say goodnight when Dean turned out the light.
“Goodnight, Sammy.” I whisper finally, still staring at the moon. But it doesn’t make me feel better. If anything, it makes me feel worse. It’s not Dean’s voice, doesn’t even sound like it, not then as a child, not now as an adult. It’s just my voice, sad and empty. “Goodnight, Dean.” I whisper, turning around towards the door to leave.
I walk past the bed and put a hand on the metal doorknob. I turn it slowly, it clicks softly. Even that soft sound echoes loudly in the quiet room.
“Goodnight moon.”
It’s Dean’s voice, so soft it could be a whisper. I spin fast enough to give me whiplash, my head snapping around to stare at Dean, eyes wide.
Dean is unchanged from moments ago. I don’t know what I was expecting. A miracle, maybe, for those green eyes to open and for him to smile and call me a bitch, laugh at the tears, because he’d see them no matter how hard I tried to hold them back. A joke to come from his lips, that this is nothing, he’s been through worse.
But he hasn’t.
I haven’t.
I can’t do this without him. I can’t think about what my life might be like without him-don’t want to-he’s always been there. I won’t have a life without him.
* * *
Two days later, I force myself to go back to Dean’s room after leaving and not looking back. He’s still as I left him-pale and unmoving, and the doctors don’t think he’ll wake up. Dad said goodbye already, and he wanted to talk to me about going after the demon again, this time about going after “the demon who did this. Who took mom, and Dean from us.”
He told the doctors to take Dean off life support, to let him go. The tubes are recently removed from his mouth, some of the wires are missing. Dean looks peaceful. He doesn’t look dead. The machine still beeps, the television monitor still shows a heartbeat, weak but regular. Doctors say he’ll still have a pulse, he’ll live for a few minutes without help, but he’ll taper off slow and then he’ll be gone.
I want to say what I have to say and be gone before the machine hits flatline. I can’t be here for when Dean takes his last breath-if he’s even breathing now… his chest doesn’t seem to be moving at all-can’t see his heart beat it’s last.
I can’t go after the demon without Dean. I can’t keep living this life without him. I’m not sure I can keep living without him. He’s been father and friend, brother and lover at different times in my life. He’s always been what I needed, when I needed it. He’s loved me unconditionally, he’s saved my life countless times, never tires of caring for me. He puts me before himself. Always. This life without Dean… life without Dean. I can’t think about it.
My fingers find the soft cotton of his bedcovers, and I pinch and wrinkle the cloth between them, staring at my fingers, at the white cloth until my vision blurs. “So uh… Dean… bro… y’know… Dad’s all gung ho about going after this thing… already came in here and said his goodbyes. I guess he’s leaving soon.” I’m choking on the words, but I can’t stop talking. I roll my eyes skyward and swallow harshly. “Said uh… said I should be going with him… that we’ll get it together.”
I scuff the floor with worn boots, stare down at my feet. “Ahh… I guess uh… ahh… Jesus, Dean… I can’t do this…”
“Y’know, dad said you broke down and bawled like a baby.”
My eyes snap up, not believing I just heard what I did. So soft it could have been my imagination-it’s something Dean would say. But I could swear I heard Dean’s voice, teasing and light, but hoarse, like he hadn’t spoken in some time. I shake my head. I’m hearing things. Imagining things. I’m going crazy, just like I thought I would if I ever lost Dean.
“Dean?” I lean in, peer closely at his lips, his face, his eyes. He’s utterly still, not a sign of life. I shake my head again when I get no answer, stand up straight. “Yeah… look… um… We’ll salt and burn your bones…” I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Like you… like you wanted…” It’s getting harder and harder to talk. My heart’s crawled up into my throat, and the tears burn in my eyes. I can’t see-everything’s blurred. I’m saying goodbye to my brother. I’m saying goodbye to Dean, something I swore I’d never do again after leaving him for college.
“Jesus… I… I can’t…” I pull a chair up and sink into it before my knees give out and my legs crumble and I fall to the floor. I’m that weak, that shaky. My hands tremble against the bedcovers. This isn’t happening.
I close my eyes, whisper in my head that I’m not going to cry.
“It’s okay y’know. We know you’re a chick at heart.”
I can almost see him, looking sidelong from under half-closed eyes at me, like he did after electrocuting himself and waking up in the hospital, talking in that low, joking voice he uses when he’s saying something he means but needs to cover it up because he’s Dean, and he’d never really say such things.
He hasn’t moved though, hasn’t spoken, hasn’t breathed.
“Goodnight moon.” I say, staring over Dean’s body out the window. It’s dark, the moon isn’t full anymore, it’s waning, slowly, ebbing away like Dean is.
“I used to read you that story. Years ago. You remember?”
“Yeah… yeah, I remember.” I answer. I must be going crazy, having a conversation with my dead-no, dying… not dead yet-brother. I look down at him, slide my hand across the mattress until it’s touching his. He’s still warm, his skin is still soft. He still feels alive. I take his hand without really thinking, winding my fingers through his one last time, remembering in flashes nights spent in bed with him, from as young and as far back as I can remember until nights just recently until we met up with dad again.
“Goodnight… Dean.” I choke out quietly. I can’t say goodbye, but I can say goodnight. It’s not as… final. Because in the morning, there will be sun again, and maybe Dean will smile and his eyes will open.
And there it is. Movement, so small, so faint it’s barely noticeable, but it’s there. It’s Dean’s fingers, moving in my hand, and this time, when I hear “Goodnight moon”, it’s Dean’s voice, raspy and weak, but it’s real, and Dean’s alive.
“Dean?” I slide off the chair to my knees, until I can look over the edge of the bed, my face even with his. “Dean?” My voice breaks on his name the second time, and I can’t hold back the tears that burn their way down my cheeks.
His fingers move again in mine.
“Dean… Dean… please… can you open your eyes?” I don’t care that he’s going to call me a girl, don’t care that I’m never going to live this down.
“Hey, bitch.” His lips curl up in a half-smile, and as I move even closer, to stare down into his eyes, they flutter, flicker open. They’re sick and dark and emptier than I’ve ever seen them, but they’re open, and there’s life where there wasn’t any before.
“Jerk.” I whisper, and that’s it. I’m sucking in air to keep from breaking down completely, and I glance over my shoulder, just to see if the blinds on the window are open. They’re not. Dad can’t see. The doctors can’t see. At least only Dean can make fun of me for this.
I lift his hand, mindful of the IV line that still runs into his skin, kiss his knuckles.
“It’s okay, you know.” Dean says quietly.
“Hmmm?” I don’t trust my voice to keep from cracking, don’t trust myself to keep the tears at bay.
“I’ll forgive you, this once.” He turns his eyes only to look down at me, still too weak to move anything more than his fingers it seems. “…if you’re going to break down and cry like a bitch.”
I lift my other hand to swipe across my eyes, and manage a smile before the tears come in earnest. My voice somehow manages to stay steady. “I thought I lost you, Dean… I thought… I thought this was it, y’know?”
He doesn’t answer, just squeezes my hand harder.
I want to tell him I love him, but I don’t. I can hear the doctors beyond the door, they’re coming in. Apparently the machines that are still hooked up to Dean let them know he woke up, that he’s alive. I lean up and kiss him quickly though, a press of my lips to his that says ‘I love you’ better than words, I hope.
“Yeah… me, too, Sammy.” He whispers, and I sink back into the chair as he squeezes my hand once more and doctors swarm around us. Dad stands in the door. He just watches. “Me, too.”
He lets go my hand when the doctors ask him to, let them run their tests, take blood and check his vitals. They call it a miracle. Dean and I call it brotherhood, and that night, when Dad’s resting, I read Dean Goodnight Moon, and we both say it at the same time. “Goodnight, dad.”
“Goodnight Dean.” I say, still smiling.
“Goodnight, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is still weak and raspy, but he sounds better all the time, his breathing gets easier and his color returns with every breath.
And in unison once again, “Goodnight, moon.”
~ fin ~
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