Post-apocalyptic setting
Your character's world has ended and purgatory awaits them, a wasteland full of ruined buildings. The surrounding desert constantly wears down the buildings with a neverending wind. There aren't any monsters to worry about, no zombies or demons, but your characters are haunted by the ghosts of people they once knew and there's only one escape from
( Read more... )
No time like the present, though. He had no idea if Dean was aware of him or not, but...there wasn't a lot of options. Besides, it'd been awhile, and he just-he'd be finding Ruby soon, but for now. Right now.
He picked up the knife, slicing a thin line across the inside of Dean's wrist. Across, not down, because he didn't want to spill all of Dean's blood. That wasn't the point. He closed his lips around the cut, aware but uncaring of how he must've looked to anyone walking by. The heady rush had been novel once. Now it was less of a rush as it was just leveling himself out, making sure he kept his abilities the way they were supposed to be. Make sure he didn't go around passing out again or hallucinating rather than simply seeing the spirits.
She hovered, never far. Flowing white dress, even though Sam couldn't recall Jess ever owning a white dress. Mostly, she just looked like she felt sorry for him. Could've been his imagination, though.
He wiped away a fleck of blood at the corner of his lips with his thumb. He leaned over Dean, closed his eyes and felt. That tug of a thread he could always latch onto. The dull throb between his eyes started almost instantly, building up until it was a sharp spike that made him start to consider that perhaps digging a bullet out of his dead brother's head wasn't such a bad idea after all. It took less than a minute, but it might as well have been forever before he heard the faint clink of the bullet.
He opened his eyes, tasted blood when he licked his lips. His blood, this time, running from one nostril and pooling just above his lip. He stared at Dean and thought about saying his brother's name, but the notion of talking seemed a bit beyond him at the moment, fingers still pressed against his temple as if doing that actually helped.
Damn it, if Dean still didn't wake up after this-
He wasn't going to think about that.
Reply
The next thing he knew, he was coming to, which was an experience in itself to a guy who couldn't sleep anymore. It'd been so long since he'd actually been unconscious that at first he didn't know what happened, only that there was a gap and it didn't have anything to do with those tests that turned him into whatever he was now. He didn't jolt awake, slowly coming out of it and realizing he could see again.
His eyes were already open, having been frozen that way when he'd been knocked on his ass by the slug. He must've fallen down, 'cause all he got was the ground sideways, starting to run red with Mousey's blood and his. Dean could feel he was lying partially on her, the warmth fading from the dead woman. He could even feel something else leaking from his head, although what it was, he couldn't tell yet.
Dean Winchester couldn't move.
He told his corpse to get up, shrug this off like it did everything else he'd run into after Landels. It stubbornly refused. It was the first time he'd been unable to move, to do whatever he wanted, since he woke up dead months ago. In the first few seconds, with his body simply lying there like the lump of meat it actually was, Dean didn't panic. Maybe it was just jump-starting, especially since he hadn't run into anything before that could stop him cold like that - and anyway, he wasn't dead dead, seeing as he was still here in his body. The seconds turned into a minute. Then several more minutes of lying there, limp. Trapped.
Okay, now he was thinking panicking looked like a good idea.
Dean had a bridge collapse on him, fallen through his share of floors testing them for Sam, and been shot and stabbed more times than he'd been used to in his previous life, but he hadn't ever been trapped like this, not even those few times Sam left him in a room with salt or a devil’s trap on accident. At least he could still move his own body those times, even if it was just to pace impatiently about the room until his brother came back to break the lines. Terror began to well up in him as he fought again and again to pick his corpse up, with about as much success as beating his head at a wall. Didn't stop him from trying, just like he'd tried to squirm away in Landels, do anything those months ago on that table while they mutilated him. Dean could feel, think. That was it; he couldn't even move his head or his eyes. Dean was starting to go into a full-blown panic attack when it sank in this could be permanent.
Why didn't Sam exorcise him when he had the chance?
What if he was gonna spend centuries lying on the floor of a friggen Wal-Mart, with the floor as the last, only, thing he could see and the blasting of the wind outside the only thing he could hear?
That room in Landels, the one with the metal, the hooks, the injections? It didn't have a monopoly on the idea of Hell, not by a long shot. Being undead, immortal, whatever he was now didn't mean he still wasn't scared shitless about Hell, in whatever form it came in. At least in the Hell he'd been expecting to go to when the hellhounds came, he'd always thought in the back of his mind he could claw his way out sooner or later.
If Dean's heart functioned, it would've been hammering in his chest. It sat silent, one of the only organs he had not reduced to red paste from the hellhounds mauling him.
The worst part was knowing the only thing stopping him from escaping wasn't the bullet lodged somewhere in his head. The tattoo. The one he couldn't even touch himself. It didn't hurt, but whenever he tried to instinctively flail, escape out of his own meat suit, Dean simply couldn't. Then he thought about getting stuck here, unable to help his little brother, leaving him alone in this wasteland while he rotted here (could his body even rot?). Dean lay there for several minutes, paralyzed, and the only change of pace was the sounds of footsteps that didn’t sound at all like Sammy’s. Soon enough a shadow fell over him. Dean couldn’t see the person, eyes still frozen forward, but he could feel whoever it was running his hands over his back, patting him down, rifling through his pockets.
Reply
Dean couldn’t believe this. In that second, he wanted nothing more to roll over and rip the man apart. Where was Sam?
The man obviously thought he was dead. Anyone would be, especially if - and Dean didn’t even want to admit this - it’d been a pretty damn good shot, right smack in the middle of his forehead. Dean felt the man finish checking the back of his bloodied jacket and jeans, and that was when he rolled him over. Dean flopped over on his back, still limp, still unable to move and knowing if anything was gonna drive him insane aside from the thought of being trapped, being unable to protect Sammy, it was how teasingly close the rifleman was and why wasn’t he bleeding? Even paralyzed, Dean felt that impulse to wipe that - that human off the map. Hell, he should’ve been able to possess him, jump from his own corpse to that living body. Dean’s black eyes stared up at the rifleman, a kid not much younger than Sammy, and whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t to see eyes like that.
The kid abruptly stood up, bringing him slightly past Dean’s limited range of vision. All he got was a pair of legs and, suddenly, the sound of Sammy’s Glock firing. The legs suddenly vanished. Thump. Body hitting the ground. Sammy appeared at his side, bending over him. Relief flooded through him. Don’t leave me, the part of Dean still trapped in that lab gibbered in the back of his mind, take me with you, Sammy. Don’t leave me here!
Dean didn’t know what Sam could do. What if there was another sniper?
Whatever he was expecting, trying his best to keep it together in his own body, he wasn’t expecting Sam to reach out of his line of sight and come back with his own bowie knife. Dean barely remembered getting the weapon from some little girl claiming she was a goddess - all he knew was it was rusted, the blade itself still sharpened cause he made sure to maintain that part. Dean felt Sam pick up his wrist, pushing back the sleeve of his tattered jacket, the movement jostling him so that his head lolled and, incidentally, gave him a better view of what was going on than the sky. Sam had his wrist exposed and, as he watched, his little brother turned the bowie knife’s rusted blade down and drew it across his skin. Compared to a head-shot, it didn’t hurt much. Blood welled out, sluggish compared to a human but still coming out, which would’ve relieved him a long time ago that it wasn’t totally congealed. He knew what Sam was doing even before he lifted his unresponsive wrist up and began drinking his blood, blood that Dean had no idea if it was still human (just of the, y’know, dead variety), all demon, or something in-between: all he knew was it seemed to help Sam, it kept him running in a way food couldn’t, and that he would’ve let him do this even if he wasn’t inconveniently paralyzed this second.
Juicing up didn’t seem to be the only thing on Sam’s mind. His brother leaned over him, close, one hand cupping the side of his head; Dean felt it then, something wrong, something invading him. The bullet lodged in his head was impossibly starting to move on its own, even if it didn’t want to come quietly - he could feel the damn thing moving jerkily in his own skull, kicking about, sliding, stopping, but definitely making progress even if it was one of the weirdest, most uncomfortable things he’d sat through in a long time. If Dean could’ve moved, his eyes would’ve flicked to Sam’s, ‘cause while his body’s brain was being shredded to pieces, worse than when the slug punched through him the first time, that didn’t mean his mind was gone. He could still put two and two together. He’d known Sam could use telekinesis, but it’d always been extremely limited, and he’d be lucky to even get a spoon to bend.
Reply
Or he had help.
Ruby was dead, though. So either it was some major solo study sessions or Sammy found someone else than that bitch.
Why didn’t you tell me?
But that was a stupid question. Dean would do anything for Sammy…didn’t mean his little brother owed him squat: Dean couldn’t even die and go to Hell like he was supposed to. If Sam kept things from him, he probably had it coming. He didn’t have to like it, but that was just how things were. Even with this extended lifespan he had (“lifespan”, what a joke), Dean couldn’t ever begin to make up that night when doomsday hit and Sam came for him. When Sam didn’t leave him behind even though he’d been dead for months and was still dead.
Eventually the bullet came out, pulled by an invisible force that Dean could feel, almost like an irritating hum on the roof of his mouth. More fluids leaked out the wound, not even warm like Mousey had been. Dean stared as Sam watched him, waiting, cradling his head as his nose bled, thanks to the massive strain he’d put on himself trying to help him.
Dean didn’t revive immediately, even with the bullet out of his head. Control of his corpse came in bits and pieces. It was several more minutes before Dean suddenly shifted, grunting as his eyelids fluttered, black eyes able to move, to focus on something other than whatever was immediately right in front of him. His first instinctive impulse was to suck in a breath, except his lungs didn’t work very well these days, if at all, and it was just going through the motions more than anything else, a habit he hadn’t kicked. Dean felt the rest of the fog start to clear, although he was still too winded to get to his feet. His head turned slowly toward Sam, black eyes fixed on his brother even as he unconsciously drew up his bleeding wrist to his chest, his old instinct to put pressure on it and stem the blood-flow even though he knew perfectly well it was useless. Dean seemed to remember what he was doing, his hand loosely dropping to his side.
“Thanks, Obi-Wan,” he said. “You’re my only hope.”
He didn’t even know where that came from: it just popped right out on its own. Somehow felt like it was the right thing to say.
By then he could sit up, the ringing sensation inside his ears gone, the only thing still bothering him was a weird tingling in his arms and legs. Dean reached up, touched his fingers to the bullet-hole in his forehead, and came away with blood and some kinda clear fluid he guessed was supposed to be inside his head, not trickling out like it was still doing and going down the bridge of his nose. He glanced at it, wiped some of it away, and then looked back at Sam, concerned, and zeroed in on the sign of blood on his brother: he'd taken a shoulder hit in the firefight. Dean knew he'd have to patch his brother up. Might not be a headshot, but his brother could bleed out even if he couldn't if they didn't get it looked at.
Thanks to Landels, his memory of first-aid was crap; the first week after their escape, when they stepped outside and found the world a wasteland, Sam sat him down so he could relearn everything about how to treat injuries. This had been before they both realized Dean literally didn't need it and that it was only for Sam's benefit now - Dean didn't personally see a difference, and dove into the "lessons". Sam's life could depend on it. Now he was glad he'd brought the heavy duffle with the ammo and first aid supplies, even if he'd left it inside Receiving.
“Let’s get you inside, Sammy,” he said, as if he hadn’t just got shot in the head. “You need water, and I've gotta look at that," he added, nodding at the injured shoulder.
Reply
They were beyond cheating death at this point.
Sam pressed the back of his hand beneath his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood. Was he supposed to tip his head back or forward? He could never remember; everyone had that one thing they mixed up constantly and that was his. Dean might've been able to tell him once, but Dean didn't know anything now aside from what Sam had told him. A part of him wanted to set Dean in front of a rusted car and a box of tools, see if Dean could recall how to rebuild things the way he could before. The memories weren't all gone. Some of it was buried deep in there.
Like Obi-Wan, apparently. Though he knew Dean didn't actually understand the reference he was making. The demons that crawled out of hell before could absorb the memories of their host, brush up on their pop culture while they walked among the humans, but none of those were options for Dean. Sometimes Sam would say something and all he'd get was a look, as if Dean knew he was meant to understand, but couldn't. It'd hurt too much to see that look, so Sam had stopped making comments of the sort. One more item on a long list of things he'd given up.
Blood loss and the pounding between his eyes made the world spin, sent him stumbling when he pushed to his feet. He didn't say anything, too busy focusing on not keeling over. He couldn't even feel the bullet in his arm anymore. The headache overpowered that, and he almost tripped over the ledge of the opening as he went inside. With the building cleared out ("cleared out", now there was a euphemism), they might as well stay here despite his plans to head out further. No point in travelling while he was bleeding out. They could use a day or two here, especially with supplies right on hand. He knew they couldn't stay beyond that, though. It was cleared out now, but there was no telling for how long that'd be the case. He figured if no more unexpected visitors dropped in by nightfall, they were safe for a bit. As safe as they ever managed to be, that was.
Bracing one hand on a stacked pile of crates, he sat down, a little heavier than he'd intended. As he waited for Dean to rummage out the first aid supplies, he tucked his gun away again and began peering at the ragged edges of the bullet hole, blood still trickling. He'd probably obtained more gunshot wounds in the past month or so than his whole life combined. Hunters went through a crapload of ammunition themselves, but few shifters or spirits picked up a gun and fired back.
Technically, he could've taken care of the injury on his own. It wasn't as if he was unfamiliar with the process. If he looked, he could spot the rough scars that came from uneven stitching, done when he was too drunk, too uncaring, to sew properly. He got better after Ruby showed up.
But he'd figured out early on that while he couldn't give Dean what he should've been able to give-couldn't save him or fix him or turn back time, hell he couldn't even bring himself to tell Dean everything half the time-he could give him this. He could give Dean something to do, make sure Dean didn't feel useless or like he wasn't needed. Unless Sam was on his own or they were in a tight spot, he always let his brother patch him up.
Reply
Looking at it like that, Dean was surprised Sammy came back for him, even fished the bullet out of his head.
He found the duffle right where he left it, shoving aside a sawed off shot-gun to get to two bottles of water and the first aid kit. It was small, dented to hell and covered in black scuff marks from the action it'd seen. Honestly, he had no idea how old it was, but when he came back with that and gave it to Sam, he'd actually been proud of himself for finding it. Dean brought it over, sitting down next to his little brother, laying the kit on his lap and passing him a bottle of water before he set to work patching up his brother. The one thing they were missing was alcohol, and he wasn't sure how safe water was for cleaning wounds like this. Dean kept having that niggling feeling once upon a time he did know. Dean went to work on his brother, removing the outer layers of tattered clothing, using the water - water Sammy very much needed, and not just for this - to clean his brother's wound. It was ragged at the edges, bleeding fast 'cause Sam was alive with a healthy, pumping heart. Dean did his best to wash out the blood and the general debris, running over the treatment exactly like Sam showed him.
Next he picked up the tweezers, ran water over them - the thought we need to sterilize these, seriously popped up suddenly in his head, sliding away into that fog as soon as it appeared - and braced his brother.
Dean met Sam's eyes, his own eyes no longer that opaque, soulless black anymore. Aside from the gaping, bleeding bullet-hole smack in the center of his head, he looked human again, could've even passed for alive. He was pretty sure he had full control of his corpse again. He was also pretty sure that even if he was okay now, Sam wasn't, and this was gonna hurt like a bitch for him. Dean hated having to make this worse for his brother, though he didn't say anything aside from that brief look before he looked down, focusing at his job. At first he couldn't locate the bullet, lodged in there farther then he thought and the tweezers not getting any purchase on his first try. Dean kept at it, his hand almost impossibly steady - he couldn't shake, tremble, unless he forced himself to.
A dead steady hand was one of the few benefits of his new lease on (un)life. Couldn't get jittery nerves if your nervous system was dead. All he could do was ape being alive, and half the time he didn't see the point, especially when Sam knew what he was these days and seemed okay with it.
Reply
"Drink up," Dean said. It wasn't an order.
It wasn't a question, either. It just was what it was.
Dean had memories of ordering his brother around in the past, even teasing him and jerking his leg with pranks, but those days were over, maybe even for good. All that was left was that thought of protect Sam and nothing else but Sam. Being trapped on that table, even when doomsday rolled around, hearing the door open and seeing his brother's silhouette against the flickering overhead light was burned into his mind with a vivid intensity that overshadowed all his previous memories. Dean couldn't remember if he begged Sam to take him with or not; all he could remember was that sheer sense of relief, something downright unnatural after being used to the pain. The loneliness.
Dean frowned, looking down at his own arm. His wrist was still bleeding at that same slow pace as before. Probably had something to do with being some kind of manufactured demon, for all he knew (and there was a lot he didn't know about what he was, thanks to those asshole doctors in Landels not even leaving a handbook before they died). His injuries - the surface ones, at least - did heal, if slowly, and his blood seemed to take twice as long as Sam's to begin to scab over. He could be bleeding from both the headshot wound and the knife cut for days. It did leave him wondering how he didn't run outta blood at the rate he went through the stuff, or what would happen if he did. Still, he was bleeding now, so...
Saving him outside took a lot outta Sam, even with the pick-me-up he'd gotten from sucking down some of his blood. A year ago, he might've been horrified at the idea of Sam sucking blood, much less demon blood. Nowadays, he couldn't give a shit, 'cause all that mattered was Sam survived and that was it, end of story.
Dean mutely held out his bloodied wrist toward his brother.
Reply
He suspected it had to do with the demon blood, either what Ruby and Dean had given him or what had always been in him ever since Azazel. He didn't know how else to explain it. It sure as hell wasn't luck or anything ridiculous like that. And it most definitely wasn't divine intervention. If there'd been any to begin with, they'd long abandoned this world.
There wasn't much to talk about or anything to do while Dean fixed him up, so Sam just sat there and tried not to think about how he really wished they had a bottle of aspirin or ibuprofen or something because his head was freaking killing him and the hole in his arm was rapidly catching up. He could destroy the very essence of demons without a sweat, but apparently he couldn't nudge pencil without nearly bursting a blood vessel or three.
He'd get better, though. If he got enough practice, enough blood. For a moment, he thought about telling Dean that he would've told him later about how his abilities were growing, when it would've been something worth telling-he hadn't missed the why didn't you let me know in Dean's eyes earlier-but he shrugged it away. He owed Dean an explanation, owed Dean a lot of things, but he wasn't sure how to repay any of that. Even if he knew where to start, even if he knew, he didn't think he had the right to try and regain his brother's trust again or make up for everything. It was too much. He'd done too much. And while Sam wanted to believe Dean stuck around to take care of him because Dean was Dean, being his big brother, he knew better. Dean was here because the only other option was being alone. It sure as hell wasn't because Dean owed him anything.
Sam couldn't bring himself to reject that. The reason didn't matter; if Dean stayed, it was enough. He couldn't ask for more.
He reached for the nearest water bottle with his free hand, holding it in place between his legs so he could twist off the cap. Still sealed-that was lucky. It wasn't often he came across half a bottle this fresh, never mind several. He wasn't watching, but he could tell Dean was nearing the end of the stitching from where the needle was piercing. Lucky, too, that Dean had somehow found them a proper suture needle. Not that something makeshift wouldn't have worked, but doing it with a straight needle was difficult and dug deeper into the flesh than it needed to.
Not that holding the wound together was their biggest problem. He'd have to keep an eye on it over the next few days. It would get infected, he was sure of it. That was unavoidable; he never healed as fast as he was supposed to, even the smallest cuts growing red and angry before getting better. The question was just how bad.
Nothing to do but wait and see, though.
Lulled by the silence and the rapid descent from the earlier rush of adrenaline, his focus slipped away from him for a brief moment; by the time he pulled his attention back, Dean had his wrist in front of him, blood still flowing from the cut. Sam blinked. Belated guilt struck him out of nowhere. Dean had always given, even when Sam had never asked, but Sam hadn't ever taken blood from Dean while he was down like that. He knew Dean wouldn't have said no, but that wasn't the point, and now his brother wasn't even hesitating to offer more.
Sam started to turn him down, trying to regain some semblance of self-control maybe, but the blood started to drip and he thought, screw it. There was no one around to give a damn, no one to look and think, monster. There was only him and Dean, and pretending to be what he wasn't, pretending to be something other than a freak, was worth nothing here.
Reply
For a second, he thought Sam had enough.
There was just that split second of hesitation. His brother reached out, grabbed his wrist in a grip that would’ve bruised him if he’d been alive, and pulled him closer so he could drink from the bleeding knife-cut. Dean waited patiently for him to finish. Dean knew his blood somehow helped his brother, kept him from blacking out, kept him on the ground and on his feet, but he still didn't know why. He knew he should just be glad he could help Sammy and leave it at that...but there was also this uneasy feeling, something he guessed was a throwback to when he'd been alive. At first he couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Then he remembered. Dad knew something about Sammy, only he hadn't said anything aside from that kill-order. Dean could remember that, even undead, and with his memory riddled with holes.
One day he planned to ask Sam about it. For now, he was content to just sit there, headshot wound and all, and sit there with his little brother while he got his fill.
xxxxx
“It’s empty,” Dean said later that evening as he came back from scouting the rest of the Wal-Mart’s interior. This time, he’d been extra thorough, even taking the time to block up any of the possible exits so they wouldn’t get any more surprise visitors. Getting shot in the head like that had been an experience in itself; he’d only been trapped for maybe ten, fifteen minutes tops, but he’d learned better.
It didn’t matter if he could survive it. He didn’t want to if it meant he could be paralyzed in his own corpse like that again, if he left Sam alone and without backup ‘cause all it took was a single slug to the head to knock him out of commission and make him useless. Which reminded him - he needed to ask Sam about removing the tattoo, or at least breaking a line in it so he could at least have a backdoor out in case he got stuck or his corpse finally crapped out on him. It wasn't like he couldn't find someone else to possess, or even just another body (Dean wasn't too particular, so long as he could get back in the game). Looking at his brother, still nursing his wounded arm and needing a place to get some rest and heal, Dean used what little tact he still had left and kept his friggen mouth shut. Tomorrow. He’d ask tomorrow, ‘cause he sure as hell couldn’t do it himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, when Sam wasn’t looking. On one hand, Sam gave him the tattoo personally, which meant it was something automatically important - on the other hand, it was now more of a liability than anything else. He couldn’t be possessed if he was already possessing himself, way he figured it when he waited until Sam was sleeping before trying to remove the tattoo with a steak knife months ago, thinking if he cut deep enough, he’d be able to break the line. Dean couldn’t even touch it with the tip of the blade. It just slid off, and instead he’d just ended up with a nice big gash on his shoulder, right to the bone.
Obviously it was demon proof.
Someone else had to do it. Technically, any human could. Dean wanted only Sam to do it.
After everything he’d seen, including today’s headshot, Dean thought cutting into the tattoo wasn’t gonna be too traumatic. Okay, so maybe he didn’t have the best judgment on what counted as “traumatic” in the first place these days, but he knew Sam wasn’t squeamish; you couldn’t be, not after the world ended.
Reply
“Best I could find. Either that or we had back to the apartments,” Dean shrugged. He seemed to have almost forgotten about the bleeding gunshot wound in his head as he turned his attention away from Sam to the sleeping bags. Some of them were awful small, in brighter colors than the others. For kids, he guessed. Wasn’t like they’d need them anymore. “There’s no food here, just the water. Sorry, Sammy.”
Tomorrow, he’d find something. Some food, a working car, hopefully some gas.
Dean ran down the checklist of things he had to do, not caring how long it’d take or that he’d probably be moving all night or all day. Leaving Sam alone after the firefight didn’t sit well with him; still didn’t change the fact he had to, especially since he could cover ground faster and more steadily than his brother, even if he wasn’t wounded. He hadn’t exactly told Sammy about his plan to outrun the ghosts, or that he planned to make it less of a living hell for his brother, no matter what it took or how many people he had to kill to make it happen. West. Keep moving west.
California. Dean had privately decided on California. As far away as they could get from the East Coast.
He wanted to surprise Sam. Dean couldn’t remember exactly why he’d picked California over, say, Oregon or Mexico. Something in California had been important to Sam, he guessed.
There was always going home to Lawrence. Even dead, Dean wasn’t cool with that idea at all. It hadn’t been home even when he’d been alive, just a place to be avoided. Now it was probably just a pile of rubble and parched weeds. Dean just had a better feeling about California, whether or not he could remember all the details or not.
By then, he hoped to make things better along the way. Weird, how all those months of being dead, being maimed and experimented on, then left in the dark waiting for those doors to open again, that he could still think stuff like that. Dean wouldn’t say it was optimism. More like it was the only thing he could think of, the only goal that made any sense to him and that meant he obsessed over it, thought about it as much as he thought about all those months in Landels, his brother standing over him, undoing the straps binding him to that table while everything fell apart around them.
Sometimes it occurred to him to wonder how Sam knew to find him there of all places. That and why he even kept looking for him, all these months after his contract ended.
Sam hadn’t offered an explanation - they’d been too busy trying to escape, then trying to survive, which quickly turned into just making sure Sam survived, ‘cause Dean was apparently a human cockroach now - and Dean hadn’t brought it up. Maybe once they hit California, and things settled down, he’d ask.
Reply
An image of a girl stared up at him from one of the sleeping bags and Sam resisted the sudden urge to flip the damn thing over. Dean would've made fun of him once. This was a golden opportunity for that. But there wasn't even a flicker of amusement. Granted, he hadn't expected anything. Not by now. It was just, a part of him couldn't help waiting for it, anyway.
Sam sat down on the makeshift (extremely makeshift) bed. He tugged the Glock out of his waistband and placed it within reach, shaking his head at the suggestion that they head back.
"This'll do. Thanks."
Sleeping on a real mattress would save him from waking up with a kink in his spine, true, and the apartment, despite being in shambles, was a bit better insulated than this place. But convenience was more important than comfort. Wasn't as if he hadn't made do with worse, sleeping propped up against a pile of broken concrete or in the cargo bed of an abandoned pickup truck once with a tarp thrown over to protect from the dusty wind, the bodies of a couple still inside the vehicle itself. When you were half dead on your feet, where you slept became a non-issue so long as you found somewhere to do it. Somewhere that wouldn’t get you killed or looted or both in two seconds flat.
Lack of food was a slight disappointment, too, but not a big deal. He'd gotten used to living on water. The blood did sate him a little bit, took the edge off the gnawing hunger. Whether it was due to the buzz or something else, he had no idea, but he wasn't gonna complain. He knew he'd lost weight, probably a lot of weight, actually. He'd always lost weight easily, once he'd gotten past that whole short-and-chubby stage and hit his growth spurt. The way things were, he was never gonna regain any of it back. Hostess cakes and chocolate bars made for a poor diet. Fridges had stopped running so most stuff was spoiled, if they were even still around. But Dean came back with things sometimes. Cans of soup, usually.
Not tonight, though. The water would have to be good enough. Maybe if they hit a rare patch of luck, he could scrounge up a case of Coke or something so he could run on sugar and caffeine, if nothing else. They had a couple of days to look around. He didn't intend to stay long, but they could use the time out.
Wasn't like the world could end twice. They weren't in a big rush. There was nothing left to outrun when you'd already outrun the end of days.
He hooked a finger around his jacket, the black jean material beyond worn, but durable enough. He'd taken to using it as a blanket when he could. Next best thing. It didn't quite keep him warm, but it kept him covered and while he could sleep without if he wanted to, he didn't like the illusion of exposure. They were just fortunate the temperature hadn't dipped into freezing levels. Yet. He was waiting for it. Another reason to keep on moving, moving south at the very least. The last thing they needed was to be caught in a snowstorm or even heavy rainfall. There weren't a lot of places to take cover. Catching pneumonia? Really not high on his list.
Reply
Not that his plan was foolproof; sometimes he'd open his eyes and she'd be burning all the same, but standing beside him instead. Without Dean here-God, he probably would've gone insane by now if Jess had been his only companion. Dean kept a barrier between him and the spirits, gave him something else to focus on.
Sleep took him fast, the way it often did. He used to have trouble falling asleep, but that'd stopped. Exhaustion did that to you. Dreams escaped him, too; he could never remember even if he knew he must've dreamed something because sometimes he'd snap awake in cold sweat or to Dean shaking him out of it. He didn't stay asleep for long-the stop-and-go pattern of their daily lives meant that he awoke at one or two hour intervals. If nothing was going on, if Dean wasn't looking edgy, then he went back to sleep.
When he woke up this time, though, something was going on. Dean, reading. That wasn't entirely new in and of itself; with no more televisions, books were all that was available to refresh his memory or keep him occupied. He didn't need the sleep and Sam supposed standing guard had its dull moments. He knew his brother was constantly on the alert regardless despite seemingly preoccupied with the book.
He thought about settling back in for another hour of rest-he didn't quite feel like it, but he knew he needed to recharge-but curiosity took over and he flicked on his flashlight (they'd need to look for new batteries, as well, he thought absently), shining it in Dean's direction. The beam caught the cover. It was torn down the middle, almost in half, and he could see a few pages on the floor at Dean's feet where they'd fallen out, but Sam could still make out the overly chiseled chest of a man with long, flowing black hair, a petite woman wrapped in his arms.
One eyebrow went up. "Dude." He propped himself up on one elbow, sleep-roughed voice."Are you reading a Harlequin?"
Reply
Huh. He wasn't sure what it was about a "harlequin" that made his brother use that tone - he didn't seem angry, just...amused - except it might've something to do with the illustration, which was pretty unrealistic, he guessed. You couldn't get that buff without a lot of exercise and good food, which wasn't easy to come by these days. Dean couldn't exactly call himself an expert on books or drawings; he just could go with instincts, and when those failed, he'd just scrounge up whatever he could find and read everything he could lay his hands on, trying to jog his memory, see if anything was familiar. At the very least, try to learn something.
The problem was a lot of the things he'd found - newspaper pages, scraps of magazines, once a computer manual - were outdated, and while he didn't know the exact date (did it even matter?), he did know that there was Before Doomsday and After, and all of what he'd found so far was definitely After.
Dean idly flipped through the pages of the harlequin, shrugging.
"This doesn't seem like it's world news to me," he said, and for a moment, there was a flicker of his old self in his face as he broke into a lop-sided grin, even as he reached up absently to wipe away the blood starting to inch down from his forehead, "This whole thing between the guy and the girl? You think getting laid was friggen D-Day or something."
Dean could safely say he did know what D-Day was - it wasn't when the doctors vanished, leaving him to be rescued, but it'd been before his time and there had been an assload of planning. Unfortunately, the history book he'd picked up had most of the pages missing, and he'd jumped from D-Day straight to the '69 moon landing thanks to what had been a lot of missing chapters there. He wondered if that damn flag was still up there. Good chance it was, even if good ol' Earth wasn't much more alive than the moon. Aside from a few survivors, patches of dried up weeds, dead trees, and the occasional feral dog slinking by, all sunken ribs and dripping foam at the mouth, he hadn't seen a lot of life ever since leaving Landels. The problem was even with his memory riddled with holes, there was a lot of what it was like before that he did remember.
The thing that always got him wasn't how many people he didn't see driving cars or walking down the sidewalk.
For some reason, it was the food.
Dean really, really missed the food.
Funny, considering he hadn't eaten in months. Still, sometimes he surprised himself when he didn't keep turning back to memories of that lab table, prisoner in his own corpse as they worked, or Sam's rescue, but instead to a big, sloppy, juicy t-bone steak at this place called Apple John's, some crappy hole-in-the-wall in Nebraska that had been totally worth driving out of the way for.
Now he just snapped the book shut. Despite having been engrossed in reading every page like his undead life depended on it, Dean practically tossed it aside with a second thought now that Sammy was awake. Dean's eyes flickered to the bandage on his brother's arm.
"You okay? Sure you don't need more sleep?" Dean asked. Reach up, wipe the blood and clear fluid from trickling down the bridge of his nose again. Rinse, repeat when necessary. It'd only been a few hours since he'd sat up with a new souvenir, enough that it was just another rhythm in his day already. "You weren't out that long. Don't you need sleep to heal?"
Reply
Human, maybe. Wasn't much of a reference point for that anymore, though.
He watched Dean for a moment, surprised by the crooked grin he hadn't seen Dean break out since...it'd been awhile. There were flashes of who Dean had been before every so often, a cocky remark here and there, but it was rare. He never thought he'd ever miss dragging Dean away from a girl so they could actually focus on a case like they were supposed to. There were no cases, no girls, and Dean's focus was always intense, never wavering. He always knew when Dean was nearby-more so than he'd been able to before-because Dean was always watching him when he was there. Dean only ever stopped watching when Sam was out of sight.
He huffed out a sound that almost passed for a laugh. He really should tell Dean to cover up that bullet hole, but he didn't want to bring it up, make it seem like it bothered him. Even if Dean probably already knew. And it shouldn't have bothered him because it was still Dean, but-just. Being reminded of all the ways Dean wasn't himself anymore, of what Sam had completely failed to stop from happening.
Killing the one responsible didn't even come close to what he'd wanted to do. It still itched at him sometimes, despite knowing that there wasn't anything left to hunt down. But Dean didn't need to know about any of that.
"Never thought I'd see you touch a trashy novel meant for housewives, that's all," he replied quietly instead. A half-hearted explanation, if anything.
His elbow started to ache from the awkward position he'd raised himself up on so he settled back down on the sleeping bags, rolling over onto his back. It was usually okay to look up at the ceiling when he was awake, when Dean was there to talk to. Or, kind of talk to. They mostly spoke about where to go, what they found, how safe it was. Whether the other was doing okay. Better than nothing, he supposed.
Sam lay there for another minute or two before he sat up all the way. The jacket slipped off his chest. He peered at the bandage on his arm, the blood starting to soak through already. It wasn't his right arm, at least. He could still fire a gun. He could work left-handed if he really had to-their dad had made sure of that-but it wasn't quite up to par.
It'd been awhile since he'd trained, too. They didn't have enough bullets for target practice, and expending energy in a sparring session wasn't the best idea when you were running on empty constantly. He missed it, though. He missed a lot of things.
Like sleep.
He shrugged, forgetting his injury, and hid a wince. A cockroach peeked over the corner of one of the sleeping bags. Unwilling to have a crushed insect smeared all over his bedding, he picked it up and flicked it a ways off, watching it land somewhere between two crates. There was no point in killing it; get rid of one and more came along. The insect equivalent of a demon.
"In a bit," he said. Dean wasn't wrong; he did need the sleep. He needed the rest, but rest was a joke right now. Especially right after consuming the blood, it made it even harder than usual for him to settle down in proper sleep. He swept his flashlight over the room, the beam casting angles of light over the boxes of supplies. "How're we doing on batteries and ammo?"
Another thing he let Dean do. Sam kept track of all their supplies, too, of course, but he always asked Dean. It was something to talk about. Pathetic that they were reduced to this, but undeniable. And it was better than the stretches of silence that would grow and grow until he could nearly feel it pressing down on him.
Reply
Almost laughing, actually.
Dean sat up a little straighter at it - he couldn't forget a sound like that, even with his body torn to pieces and his brain pretty much just a gray pulp, thanks to today's run-in with fellow survivors, and searching his fragmented memory, he remembered Sam laughing a lot more before Landels, remembered doing stupid crap like pranking him in the car, and sometimes getting a laugh out of him, even if it was one of those Dean, you're being retarded laughs. Dean relished in that almost-laugh, making it a point to hold on extra tight to this new memory even if it didn't seem like nothing much. Dean's mouth almost started to quirk up in a smile again. He turned away, standing up and going over to their duffles to search through what they had.
They didn't have much. It was basically a whatever you could carry basis, and while he could carry a lot, way more than Sam possibly could, he did in the end have the same number of arms and legs as his brother, which did limit what they kept and what they left behind.
"Got a few AAA's. Four AA's," Dean said, almost like he was reciting it. He unzipped a side pocket, "Ammo's low, but since we got some stiffs on our hands, we can just loot whatever they got. I think that rifle would be pretty useful."
One of the things he did remember was how to handle a gun. Dean knew he was supposed to just help himself to the rifle, but what was the point? He'd been able to coast by fine without it and shooting from a distance just didn't seem fun to him. It didn't give him that warm feeling through his corpse like it had when he'd smashed that girl's skull in earlier today, his hands bathing in blood and bits of bone. Although...Dean didn't like it, but after today, finding out he could be taken out - maybe not killed, but incapacitated, which might as well be the same thing - he was wondering if maybe he should pick up a gun for himself. Dean was silent as he thought about that, undecided.
Killing up close and personal - 'scuse him, "self-defense" - didn't make Dean feel alive. Nah, he was plenty aware he was on the wrong side of the dead line, and that this time, there'd be no deals, no reapers bound by magic or any voodoo crap that would change that. It was, however, something new, something that wasn't sitting there wishing he knew just how much of him was missing after getting killed by the hellhounds and frantically trying to play catch-up with this other Dean Winchester.
He had a feeling Sam knew at least some of what he was thinking - he'd caught him more than once trying to read everything he came across, but this was really the first time he'd directly confronted him about it. Dean didn't know what it was like on the other end, having to travel around with someone who wasn't really your brother anymore; he was just glad Sam stuck with him all these months, and whatever he asked, Dean was more than happy to do. He'd make it up to Sammy, he promised himself. California was his first real goal that wasn't just directly related to making sure Sam survived into tomorrow.
It was actually a pretty powerful thing, having a goal. For the first time in his new life as some half-assed demon, he found himself thinking slightly less about those labs and more about California.
Probably was ruined, like the others, but he hoped that by the time they got there, all the other survivors would be dead, maybe killed each other off. It'd just be him and Sammy, and whatever was out there that was important to him.
Reply
Though it could help him see somewhat. That was something, at least.
He pushed to his feet as Dean went for the duffle bags, a little lightheaded still, but otherwise better. He really needed to get a move on with his abilities, making sure he didn't feel like passing out after using it just the slightest. There were no more demons to take care of. Just Dean and Ruby, and he wasn't looking to exorcise or kill the only two people he had left.
Which left him with the option of developing other skill sets. Something useful, so he wouldn't be such a burden on Dean. He knew better than to consider breaking away so that Dean no longer had to watch out for him-he wouldn't leave his brother in that way-but while Sam was willing to let Dean take care of him, he wasn't willing to actually allow himself to need it.
No, he had to be able to do this on his own, he needed to not be so damn useless all the time. Today had proven that demon or not, Dean could still hit his own brand of trouble. What if next time, it was something worse? What if he could never put his brother back together again?
Not for the first time, he thought about bringing up breaking the tattooed trap on Dean, but a selfishness stopped him, the part of him that was sure that if Dean could escape this body, he would and he'd never come back. But he should-he should do it. He knew it, he just...maybe when Dean brought it up of his own accord. Dean probably would bring it up eventually, especially after what'd happened today.
Anyway. For now, they had the supplies to sort through.
"I'll take a look."
Sam didn't wait for an answer, just headed back out to the receiving area, where the bodies of the kids they'd taken out were still sprawled on the concrete. Another sweep of the flashlight lit up the contents of someone's stomach. The smell of blood hit him hard-a different kind, not demonic; somehow, he could tell the difference-but he ignored it. He'd encountered enough blood and corpses, even before the world ended, that it was easy to look past it. The slight chill in the weather and the swirl of dust meant that the bodies took longer to rot. Small favours; ignoring blood was one thing, but rotting corpses was another entirely. That was something you never completely used to.
The fact that these people were dead by his hand, though...
Well, only one of them, technically. But Dean was the way he was because of Sam, because Sam hadn't saved him in time, and for every person Dean tore apart, he couldn't help but feel as if it fell on him in the end.
Reply
Leave a comment