SPN FIC - Faith
Sam's POV - "Faith," obviously. You can throw a little "Awww, Sam" in with the "Awww, Dean." And I ain't making a nickel off this. I just love to play with other people's toys. You know the drill.
My brother died at 2:30 that morning.
They told me about it afterwards, when I was standing in the hallway, when I'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours and didn't have any idea what they were saying.
"He crashed," somebody said.
Length: 2,000 words
Pairings: None
Rating: G, except for a word or two
Spoilers: up through "Faith"
Faith
By Carol Davis
My brother died at 2:30 that morning.
I heard about it later, when I was standing in the hallway, when I’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours and didn’t have any idea what they were saying.
“He crashed,” somebody said.
But not to me - they were talking to each other. Maybe they didn’t notice I was standing there, and maybe they didn’t know I had any connection to Dean. Maybe they’d been awake for longer than I had and they didn’t know what they were saying any more than I did.
I can remember a lot of people using that word, crash, to mean “collapse.” Or “go to sleep.”
“I’m beat, man. I’m gonna crash.”
But hearing it about Dean…
I couldn’t see him from where I was standing. Couldn’t see much of anything except a couple of empty gurneys shoved up against a wall. They - somebody - had more or less pushed me there, into a corner, out of the way. And because it seemed familiar, I let them. All the times I’d been in an ER when Dean, or Dad, had been hurt on a hunt, somebody had pushed me out of the way, told me to “wait over there” or “sit over there” or “stay out of the way, son.”
It made sense, because what was I gonna do, even if I could see him, get closer to him? Hold his hand?
I waited, and for a while it seemed like Dad was there, handling things. Any minute now, he’d come storming around that corner, demanding to know what was going on. I let myself think that, believe in it, because as much as I’d thought I was an adult at Stanford, that had mostly involved showing up for class on time and making sure the stove was turned off before I left the apartment. Here, I was going to have to talk to doctors. As soon as they noticed I was around. And I was gonna have to convince Dean to behave himself, because he’d start giving people lip as soon as he woke up.
Later on I could decide whether to tell him he’d pissed himself when the…
When the shock happened.
The electrocution.
How it had happened at all, I wasn’t sure, because he was bright enough to know that standing in the water when he let the rawhead have it with the taser wasn’t a good plan. Especially not with the taser jacked up to a hundred thousand volts.
Jesus, Dean.
There was no chair anywhere nearby, so I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes for a minute. Thought about sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor, because my legs felt like rubber bands. I was about an inch and a half from that place where you don’t care what you look like, or who sees you. My eyes were still shut when I heard somebody say, “He crashed.”
The other stuff, the things other people were saying, floated around in the air, one word at a time like they were on flash cards. It took me a while to put them back together into phrases, sentences, ideas, a conversation.
“You got him back?”
“He’s stable.”
Maybe they were talking about somebody else. Not Dean. Crashed? They didn’t mean he’d fallen asleep, or wanted to, or needed to.
Crashed.
I opened my eyes and there was a woman in scrubs standing in front of me. “Are you family?” she said.
“What?”
“The electrocution. Are you a relative?”
And there was something you could love about emergency rooms: the way you got reduced to what had happened to you.
“He’s my brother,” I said.
“We’ll need you to fill out some paperwork.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not right now.”
Right. Because in the land of the ER, paperwork came first. That meant figuring out which one of the insurance cards to use. And making myself stay coherent enough to remember the name on the card I picked. To react if somebody called me by that name.
“Is he okay?” I asked the woman.
“He -“
That would be a “no.”
Everything around me looked weird, funky, like I was looking through Saran Wrap. We’d had dinner - burgers and fries, pretty decent - but it’d been a while ago and I could feel myself starting to…yeah, crash. The food and the coffee and the adrenaline was all burned off, and if I let go just a little bit, I was gonna go down on the floor like a pile of laundry.
“Is my brother dead?”
I wasn’t sure if I actually said that, if my lips moved and sound came out, or if I only thought it. I must’ve said it, because she stared at me for a second, then said, “He crashed a few minutes ago, but we got him back.”
“Crashed?”
“Flatlined.”
Died.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she said.
“I’d like to see my brother.”
Whatever kind of look I had on my face made her give in. She nodded a little, then took me by the arm and steered me down the hall to a set of double doors that were half glass. There were half a dozen people inside, and at the center of them was Dean, lying on a gurney, half-covered with a sheet.
Even allowing for the funky things fluorescent lighting does to skin color, he looked like six kinds of crap. And he wasn’t conscious. I’d thought he’d be conscious by now - mad at himself for doing something stupid, mad at me because I was anywhere nearby and I knew he’d done something stupid. Mad at the nurses and the doctors because he hated being sick, being weak, being vulnerable.
He looked pale, frail, small.
About an hour later they told me my brother was going to die. That his heart had been badly damaged by the electrocution - the stupid thing that shouldn’t have happened - and that it was going to give out on him.
But he’d fight that. Of course he would. Because he always fought. A long time ago, when he was five or six, people who spent time with him called him “scrappy.” Like a dog. A determined little dog. The only times I ever saw him cave to anything were when Dad lit into him. No…not so much “lit into him,” because that would make him fight back, smartmouth Dad until Dad got to the point where he’d throw something or threaten to take Dean’s head off at the neck. More like, when Dad acted like he was disappointed in Dean, like Dean just plain wasn’t making the grade. That would make Dean cave, make him kind of curl up into himself. He’d stand there and listen until Dad dismissed him in some way. Then he’d go off by himself and I’d see him with his head down and his shoulders pulled forward. Blinking. Blinking a lot.
He hadn’t seen Dad in months. I hadn’t seen Dad in more than four years. There was nobody here to take charge of things, to take care of Dean, but me.
They were right, down in the ER - “crashed” was the right word. It fit.
My brother, my big brother, my guardian, my protector, my teacher, my buffer against the obsessive, impatient, angry, vengeful, passionate, obstinate force that was my father - our father - was tied to a bed with wires and tubes and his own exhaustion. And by his own mistake. Later on, after the second time I had to fight for him, he told me he wanted to die. Thought he ought to be dead. But that night, in the beginning of the first spring after he dragged me back into his life, he didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to give up.
He talked to me like it was all a done deal, warned me to take care of his car or he’d haunt my ass.
But his eyes begged me to help him.
He’d deny that - would have then, and would now. Like you build up scar tissue when a wound heals, he’d built up layers of denial and bravado and who knows what all else over the divots his life - all of it, not just Dad - had taken out of his soul. He would never ask me, or anyone, to help him. Hand him a flashlight or a box of ammo, or pass the salt, yeah. But help him? Really help him? Listen to him talk about the way people had hurt him, and give him a hand to find a way out of being lonely and scared?
When I told him I was scared, he’d mock me. But he’d listen.
Jess listened, too, but I never told her I was scared.
I couldn’t mock Dean that night. Couldn’t call him a girl or tell him this was something we could get around. Couldn’t tell him I didn’t believe the doctor, that the doctor had never come up against a Winchester before.
And I couldn’t cry. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Couldn’t do that to him.
What I could do, I had no idea.
I stood there looking at him for what seemed like a long time. Listened to him telling me his number was up.
Thinking a million things. Why wasn’t Dad there? Why had Dean, who was never stupid, done something as mind-numbingly dumb as set off a taser while he was standing in a puddle of water? Why didn’t this little box of a hospital out in America’s Freaking Heartland have a cardiac specialist who could fix things?
Worst of all - and the most useless - why was God, who had seen fit to let my mother be burned to death, who had done the same thing to Jess, who had let my father turn into an obsessive, unforgiving nutball, now going to take my brother?
Again, I wanted to let my legs give up and fall into a ball on the floor. I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, didn’t know anyone in this town, didn’t have Jess to turn to, didn’t have anyone to turn to. Had no idea where Dad was, and figured even if Dad showed up, it wouldn’t accomplish anything. What could he do, bully the doctor into changing his diagnosis?
I wanted to go somewhere and sleep. Just check out. Crash.
Dean lay there in the bed with his wires and his tubes, big purple smears under his eyes, the rest of his face fish-belly pale. Looking at me. Telling me the game was over and I had better take care of his car.
Dad’s car, once. Our car. The one we had traveled in, the four of us, back in Lawrence, before things turned to shit.
Maybe Dean didn’t know what he did. Maybe he still doesn’t.
“I’m going to die,” he said. “And you can’t stop it.”
He didn’t mean it as a challenge.
Didn’t layer it with all kinds of meaning. Didn’t imply, “I dare you.” He was too worn out, too crashed, to do that. All he seemed to be able to do was stare at things like his eyes were two holes burned into his face. The doctor had talked to him only a few minutes ago, right before he talked to me, so I figured Dean was swimming around in a big lake of “Wait…what?” It might not’ve sunk in yet, exactly what the doctor meant.
But it had. Dad had taught Dean to listen. To hone in on things. Because if you stood there thinking, “Now, wait…what was that?” when something supernatural and angry was aimed in your direction, you’d pretty much be toast.
No, he’d heard the doctor. Understood him.
And out of those two burned holes he was looking at me. Not pleading. Not blinking.
He didn’t mean it as a challenge.
“Watch me,” I said.