SPN FIC - Old Souls
This popped into my head kinda out of nowhere last night. (Must've been the Dove Extra Dark.) Thompson Lake, July 19, 2026.
The stare Sam fixed on Dean was like being pinned under an interrogation lamp. Suddenly weary, Dean shoved a hand through his hair and sorted through what Sam had told him, feeling like he was searching for the prize in a box of cereal the size of North Dakota. Not that this was anything new; Sam had pretty much expected Dean to be clairvoyant on demand since they were kids. But that never worked out, either on demand or any other way. Dean was about to lodge a protest when Sam started talking again.
Characters: Dean and Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Length: 1794 words
OLD SOULS
By Carol Davis
The wind had finally died down a little when Dean walked out onto the dock to find his brother. He hadn't looked at the clock when he got out of bed, and his watch was on the dresser with his wallet, but it felt like maybe three in the morning. Well past midnight, but still a long way from dawn.
The dock creaked and shifted under his weight enough to alert Sam that he was coming, but Sam didn't stir. He was sitting out at the end of the dock with his legs dangling over the edge, submerged in the lake almost up to his knees. When Dean sat down beside him he glanced over but said nothing.
"Hey," Dean prompted.
Sam's mouth twitched. A couple of seconds went by before he said, "Hey."
"You okay?"
"Sure."
"Middle of the night. You just felt like communing with the bats and the mosquitoes?"
"I couldn't sleep."
Dean huffed out some air. "You need to lay off the caffeine. You've been a moving target for, like, two days now."
"I'm all right," Sam said.
"You do know this is me you're talking to."
Sam considered his brother for a moment, then went back to staring toward the opposite shore of the lake, very little of which was distinguishable in the dark. His left foot dabbled idly in the water, making almost no sound. His fingers were wrapped around the edge of the dock as if he intended to boost himself off into the lake. When he noticed Dean studying him, he flinched uncomfortably, moved both hands, then laid them back where they'd been.
"I told him," he murmured.
"Told who what?"
"John. I told him...what we do."
"Thought we were gonna do that together."
"I -" Sam cut himself off. "I didn't plan it. I just -"
"Not a big deal," Dean said, although it was, it very definitely was. Rather than try to mine clues from Sam's expression, barely visible in the limited light of a moon that was maybe a third full, he rested his back against the piling at the end of the dock, bent his knees and rested his arms across them. The water was warm, he figured. Good for swimming. Ideal for swimming. Nobody out here to watch over him but Sam.
He would have dropped over the edge, into fifteen feet of warm water, if Sam hadn't been sitting like he was, back board-straight, nothing about him at all at ease.
"Dude," Dean said.
Sam turned a little and stared at him. "He knew."
"Yeah?"
That wasn't a surprise. Johnny was an observant kid, quick to pick up a handful of pieces and turn them into something solid and useful. And being that he lived here, surrounded by hunters, had been in the company of hunters since he was born - well, there was a lot to pick up.
"He knew it all," Sam said tersely, a rejection of Dean's unspoken Whatever.
Then he fell silent again, the line of his jaw hard and sharp in the moonlight.
Dean sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "It's just you and me, man. You gonna make me pull this out of you a little at a time? 'Cause if we're looking at options, I'd really rather go back to bed."
"Then go."
"Sam, for God's sake."
"He knew," Sam blurted, but not very loud. It was a hiss of sound, something he'd shoved out of his lungs. "He just kept nodding, like...like it was all same old, same old. He was listening, he was definitely listening, but everything I said... It was like he was checking things off a list. Like, 'Yup. Knew that. Yup, that too.' When I stopped, he smiled at me, like..." Sam shuddered and pulled his feet up out of the water, as if had suddenly gone cold. "Like he was proud of me for getting it right."
Dean snorted and grinned.
"It's not funny," Sam said.
"Yeah, it kind of is."
"I asked him if he understood me and he said yes. Then he said he was tired and he wanted to go to sleep, so I tucked him in. I sat with him for a while, till he started to...you know. Doze off. When I leaned down to give him a kiss, he said -"
Sam cut himself off. Sat there, staring out across the lake.
"Said what?" Dean asked.
"He said, 'It's okay, Sam.'"
The stare Sam fixed on Dean was like being pinned under an interrogation lamp. Suddenly weary, Dean shoved a hand through his hair and sorted through what Sam had told him, feeling like he was searching for the prize in a box of cereal the size of North Dakota. Not that this was anything new; Sam had pretty much expected Dean to be clairvoyant on demand since they were kids. But that never worked out, either on demand or any other way. Dean was about to lodge a protest when Sam started talking again.
"I noticed it a long time ago," he said softly, rubbing his fingers against the worn, damp wood of the dock. "The way he moves, especially if something surprises him. The way he talks. The way he holds things. I didn't think anything of it, really. People...you know. You inherit things. I thought it was just genetic."
"Okay," Dean said, still completely clueless.
"His temper. Every time he blows up at something -"
Again, Sam cut himself off. His expression strained, shifted, like there was a frantic animal underneath his face trying desperately to break free.
"Sam. Jesus, what?"
"He's Dad."
"What?"
"He's Dad. He's not...I don't mean he's like Dad. Although he is. I mean...he's Dad."
Dean blinked at him. "Seriously, what?"
"He's Dad."
"Oooooookay."
"Could you not do that?" Sam sputtered.
"What do you want me to do? What do you mean, he's Dad? Dad's gone, Sam. He moved on. We saw it."
"I don't mean he's possessed. I mean Dad's...he...came back."
"What?" Dean said.
"Every culture in the world talks about reincarnation, Dean. All of them. Even the ones that reject it officially - there are still people who talk about it. Have experienced it. Stories about reincarnation go back centuries. Millennia. I can't sit here and say it's not possible. Not after everything we've seen. Everything that's happened to us."
Dean let that lie for a moment, then said quietly, "Sammy. Man, you need some sleep."
"Tell me you haven't noticed it. Tell me."
"Your head's just in a weird place. Because of today."
"Today?" Sam said, and seemed bewildered.
"Dad died twenty years ago today."
Sam started to droop, his back sliding farther and farther away from true vertical, a lot of his weight coming to rest on his hands. "I know what today is. But it's not my imagination, Dean. The way he looked at me... What he said. 'It's okay, Sam.'"
"You sure he said that?"
"Yes."
"You're sure."
Rather than reply, Sam gave his brother a defeated look that stripped that whole twenty years off him. For a moment, he was a 23-year-old kid again, standing in the woods with Dean, tears sliding down his face, his skin turned golden by the light of their father's funeral pyre. Dean had kept his distance that night, but that was twenty years ago. Putting together a smile he hoped looked comforting enough, he reached over and rested a hand on Sam's t-shirted shoulder. "Let's get some sleep, huh?" he suggested.
"You don't believe me," Sam murmured.
"He moved on, Sammy. He's with Mom."
"What if -"
Dean waited. There wasn't much else he could do.
"What if she's here too?" Sam said. "What if she -" He stopped, then let the rest of it out, the words tumbling over each other like peas being dumped out of a bowl. "Liz picked you out of a crowd in Wal-Mart. She walked right up to you like she knew you. She was two years old, Dean. She had no clue who you were."
"Sammy -"
"At least consider it."
There wasn't much else Dean could do. Not this late at night, out here alone in the dark with his brother. Not in this place - the place he always came when he wanted to run toward something or run away from something else.
"It's possible, isn't it?" Sam insisted.
"Dude..."
"It's possible."
"Yeah. All right. It's possible. It's also nuts."
"Because I'm letting my imagination run away with me. After everything we've seen, Dean? We don't know what happens when you move on. We don't know where you move on to. Or if you stay there. What if all those people are right? What if sometimes you come back? It would make sense, wouldn't it? For it all to be a circle?" Sam paused, giving Dean a chance to agree, but Dean did nothing but shrug helplessly. "They say souls that are connected seek each other out," Sam persisted.
Silently, Dean climbed to his feet and looked across the lake at the almost featureless strip of the far shore.
His brother had wanted a lot of things over the years. Toys. Books. The chance to play soccer. To stay in one place, or to go back to one he remembered. For a stretch of almost a year, he'd insisted that his father meet "nice ladies," and the goal of that endeavor had been no mystery. Dean had done what he could to grease the skids for all of those things, whether he'd agreed with Sam's choices or not.
But this?
"It's late," he told his brother, who was no longer a little boy.
"You don't believe me," Sam said.
For a moment, the warm, muggy breeze felt familiar against Dean's face. Felt very much like the gentle brush of a warm hand. He closed his eyes against the night, against this place, against the sight of his brother, looking up at him earnestly, sadly, a little too desperately. There was nothing like a voice in the collection of sounds playing around the two of them, but for a moment he let himself hear one, let himself hear Good night, love.
"I'll try," he told Sam.
"Seriously."
"Yes, Sam," Dean said. "I'll try."
He reached out one more time to touch his brother, intending to flick Sam in the side of the head, to dismiss all of this as a game, a nothing, something that wouldn't even be spoken of in the morning.
But it was none of that, and Dean rested his palm against Sam's head for a minute.
Then he walked back down the length of the dock, away from his brother, away from the nearly empty darkness, and went back to bed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The stare Sam fixed on Dean was like being pinned under an interrogation lamp. Suddenly weary, Dean shoved a hand through his hair and sorted through what Sam had told him, feeling like he was searching for the prize in a box of cereal the size of North Dakota. Not that this was anything new; Sam had pretty much expected Dean to be clairvoyant on demand since they were kids. But that never worked out, either on demand or any other way. Dean was about to lodge a protest when Sam started talking again.
Characters: Dean and Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Length: 1794 words
OLD SOULS
By Carol Davis
The wind had finally died down a little when Dean walked out onto the dock to find his brother. He hadn't looked at the clock when he got out of bed, and his watch was on the dresser with his wallet, but it felt like maybe three in the morning. Well past midnight, but still a long way from dawn.
The dock creaked and shifted under his weight enough to alert Sam that he was coming, but Sam didn't stir. He was sitting out at the end of the dock with his legs dangling over the edge, submerged in the lake almost up to his knees. When Dean sat down beside him he glanced over but said nothing.
"Hey," Dean prompted.
Sam's mouth twitched. A couple of seconds went by before he said, "Hey."
"You okay?"
"Sure."
"Middle of the night. You just felt like communing with the bats and the mosquitoes?"
"I couldn't sleep."
Dean huffed out some air. "You need to lay off the caffeine. You've been a moving target for, like, two days now."
"I'm all right," Sam said.
"You do know this is me you're talking to."
Sam considered his brother for a moment, then went back to staring toward the opposite shore of the lake, very little of which was distinguishable in the dark. His left foot dabbled idly in the water, making almost no sound. His fingers were wrapped around the edge of the dock as if he intended to boost himself off into the lake. When he noticed Dean studying him, he flinched uncomfortably, moved both hands, then laid them back where they'd been.
"I told him," he murmured.
"Told who what?"
"John. I told him...what we do."
"Thought we were gonna do that together."
"I -" Sam cut himself off. "I didn't plan it. I just -"
"Not a big deal," Dean said, although it was, it very definitely was. Rather than try to mine clues from Sam's expression, barely visible in the limited light of a moon that was maybe a third full, he rested his back against the piling at the end of the dock, bent his knees and rested his arms across them. The water was warm, he figured. Good for swimming. Ideal for swimming. Nobody out here to watch over him but Sam.
He would have dropped over the edge, into fifteen feet of warm water, if Sam hadn't been sitting like he was, back board-straight, nothing about him at all at ease.
"Dude," Dean said.
Sam turned a little and stared at him. "He knew."
"Yeah?"
That wasn't a surprise. Johnny was an observant kid, quick to pick up a handful of pieces and turn them into something solid and useful. And being that he lived here, surrounded by hunters, had been in the company of hunters since he was born - well, there was a lot to pick up.
"He knew it all," Sam said tersely, a rejection of Dean's unspoken Whatever.
Then he fell silent again, the line of his jaw hard and sharp in the moonlight.
Dean sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "It's just you and me, man. You gonna make me pull this out of you a little at a time? 'Cause if we're looking at options, I'd really rather go back to bed."
"Then go."
"Sam, for God's sake."
"He knew," Sam blurted, but not very loud. It was a hiss of sound, something he'd shoved out of his lungs. "He just kept nodding, like...like it was all same old, same old. He was listening, he was definitely listening, but everything I said... It was like he was checking things off a list. Like, 'Yup. Knew that. Yup, that too.' When I stopped, he smiled at me, like..." Sam shuddered and pulled his feet up out of the water, as if had suddenly gone cold. "Like he was proud of me for getting it right."
Dean snorted and grinned.
"It's not funny," Sam said.
"Yeah, it kind of is."
"I asked him if he understood me and he said yes. Then he said he was tired and he wanted to go to sleep, so I tucked him in. I sat with him for a while, till he started to...you know. Doze off. When I leaned down to give him a kiss, he said -"
Sam cut himself off. Sat there, staring out across the lake.
"Said what?" Dean asked.
"He said, 'It's okay, Sam.'"
The stare Sam fixed on Dean was like being pinned under an interrogation lamp. Suddenly weary, Dean shoved a hand through his hair and sorted through what Sam had told him, feeling like he was searching for the prize in a box of cereal the size of North Dakota. Not that this was anything new; Sam had pretty much expected Dean to be clairvoyant on demand since they were kids. But that never worked out, either on demand or any other way. Dean was about to lodge a protest when Sam started talking again.
"I noticed it a long time ago," he said softly, rubbing his fingers against the worn, damp wood of the dock. "The way he moves, especially if something surprises him. The way he talks. The way he holds things. I didn't think anything of it, really. People...you know. You inherit things. I thought it was just genetic."
"Okay," Dean said, still completely clueless.
"His temper. Every time he blows up at something -"
Again, Sam cut himself off. His expression strained, shifted, like there was a frantic animal underneath his face trying desperately to break free.
"Sam. Jesus, what?"
"He's Dad."
"What?"
"He's Dad. He's not...I don't mean he's like Dad. Although he is. I mean...he's Dad."
Dean blinked at him. "Seriously, what?"
"He's Dad."
"Oooooookay."
"Could you not do that?" Sam sputtered.
"What do you want me to do? What do you mean, he's Dad? Dad's gone, Sam. He moved on. We saw it."
"I don't mean he's possessed. I mean Dad's...he...came back."
"What?" Dean said.
"Every culture in the world talks about reincarnation, Dean. All of them. Even the ones that reject it officially - there are still people who talk about it. Have experienced it. Stories about reincarnation go back centuries. Millennia. I can't sit here and say it's not possible. Not after everything we've seen. Everything that's happened to us."
Dean let that lie for a moment, then said quietly, "Sammy. Man, you need some sleep."
"Tell me you haven't noticed it. Tell me."
"Your head's just in a weird place. Because of today."
"Today?" Sam said, and seemed bewildered.
"Dad died twenty years ago today."
Sam started to droop, his back sliding farther and farther away from true vertical, a lot of his weight coming to rest on his hands. "I know what today is. But it's not my imagination, Dean. The way he looked at me... What he said. 'It's okay, Sam.'"
"You sure he said that?"
"Yes."
"You're sure."
Rather than reply, Sam gave his brother a defeated look that stripped that whole twenty years off him. For a moment, he was a 23-year-old kid again, standing in the woods with Dean, tears sliding down his face, his skin turned golden by the light of their father's funeral pyre. Dean had kept his distance that night, but that was twenty years ago. Putting together a smile he hoped looked comforting enough, he reached over and rested a hand on Sam's t-shirted shoulder. "Let's get some sleep, huh?" he suggested.
"You don't believe me," Sam murmured.
"He moved on, Sammy. He's with Mom."
"What if -"
Dean waited. There wasn't much else he could do.
"What if she's here too?" Sam said. "What if she -" He stopped, then let the rest of it out, the words tumbling over each other like peas being dumped out of a bowl. "Liz picked you out of a crowd in Wal-Mart. She walked right up to you like she knew you. She was two years old, Dean. She had no clue who you were."
"Sammy -"
"At least consider it."
There wasn't much else Dean could do. Not this late at night, out here alone in the dark with his brother. Not in this place - the place he always came when he wanted to run toward something or run away from something else.
"It's possible, isn't it?" Sam insisted.
"Dude..."
"It's possible."
"Yeah. All right. It's possible. It's also nuts."
"Because I'm letting my imagination run away with me. After everything we've seen, Dean? We don't know what happens when you move on. We don't know where you move on to. Or if you stay there. What if all those people are right? What if sometimes you come back? It would make sense, wouldn't it? For it all to be a circle?" Sam paused, giving Dean a chance to agree, but Dean did nothing but shrug helplessly. "They say souls that are connected seek each other out," Sam persisted.
Silently, Dean climbed to his feet and looked across the lake at the almost featureless strip of the far shore.
His brother had wanted a lot of things over the years. Toys. Books. The chance to play soccer. To stay in one place, or to go back to one he remembered. For a stretch of almost a year, he'd insisted that his father meet "nice ladies," and the goal of that endeavor had been no mystery. Dean had done what he could to grease the skids for all of those things, whether he'd agreed with Sam's choices or not.
But this?
"It's late," he told his brother, who was no longer a little boy.
"You don't believe me," Sam said.
For a moment, the warm, muggy breeze felt familiar against Dean's face. Felt very much like the gentle brush of a warm hand. He closed his eyes against the night, against this place, against the sight of his brother, looking up at him earnestly, sadly, a little too desperately. There was nothing like a voice in the collection of sounds playing around the two of them, but for a moment he let himself hear one, let himself hear Good night, love.
"I'll try," he told Sam.
"Seriously."
"Yes, Sam," Dean said. "I'll try."
He reached out one more time to touch his brother, intending to flick Sam in the side of the head, to dismiss all of this as a game, a nothing, something that wouldn't even be spoken of in the morning.
But it was none of that, and Dean rested his palm against Sam's head for a minute.
Then he walked back down the length of the dock, away from his brother, away from the nearly empty darkness, and went back to bed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~