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
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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.
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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.
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It didn't take too long for him to make his round and head back. He hadn't lingered to search too much, wanting only to grab the important items first. Dean would likely do a second, more thorough, sweep while Sam tried to grab another couple of hours of shuteye.
He slid the items next to the dufflebags, trying to ignore the fact that they'd basically killed three or four kids for a couple of guns and bullets and a flashlight. Yeah, they'd been attacked first, but both of them were capable of putting down a threat without taking a life. At the very least, they were capable of attempting that option. But Sam hadn't even bothered; it had barely crossed his mind.
He nodded at the rifle. "Worth lugging around, if you can manage."
Which he suspected Dean could. In terms of easy travelling, Sam didn't mind sticking with the pistol. Something small that didn't take up too much space or weight, and it was all they needed when you were basically dealing with other humans. Still, if they ever hit the open road, a more forested area, a rifle wouldn't hurt in terms of hunting game.
If they ever made it that far, that was.
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Even dead, he couldn't forget that. Maybe over time they could've peeled that away too: lucky for Sammy, he guessed, they hadn't and it was one of those weird bits of his ex-life that he could still think back on and remember with barely any gaps in it.
"Okay," Dean said, even though it hadn't been an outright question. It sounded to him like Sammy wanted him to carry it around, so he was gonna carry it around - or, according to his brother, "lug" it around, despite the fact he barely even registered the weight of the rifle. There was no difference at all between that, the heavy duffle or the rubble he moved earlier today.
He'd use the rifle if there was no choice. Fighting indoors wouldn't mean it'd be too useful, unless they were in a mall, but sooner or later they'd run out of city and hit the open road. Dean figured he could probably hunt whatever wildlife was still left out there - it wasn't like he didn't have all the time to track something down and tire it out, steadily following, unable to get tired - but it'd probably help hunting if he could just cut the crap and shoot the damn animals. Dean lowered the rifle, setting it on the ground and glancing almost pointedly at Sam as he bent down and picked up the harlequin, flipping back to a page as he took up his guard position again.
"Should probably get an early start tomorrow, Sammy," he said, and while he didn't exactly order his brother to get some rest - and not just for a couple of hours - he didn't need to. With his wound, he needed to sleep and do his best to heal.
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He didn't remember much about that lab. He remembered everything shaking apart and he remembered fighting off what'd felt like a cross between a bad hangover and losing too much blood, dizziness and a piercing headache all at once. It hadn't been Lilith, he knew it hadn't, but the eyes, that pupil-less white-it wasn't anyone low on the food chain, either. He'd only meant to exorcise the demon, he hadn't even known it was possible to do anything else, but somehow-
Either way, by the time he'd stumbled his way to Dean, he'd been far too preoccupied to notice anything but Dean. Dean and the blood everywhere, too much blood, and that should've been his first clue that something was wrong. No one could've survived that much blood loss. No one human, that was. If Dean hadn't been awake, if he'd been unconscious, Sam never would've known he was alive, but his eyes had been open.
It'd been too dark in there for him to have noticed the flash of black right away, though. He'd had his hands full trying to even get Dean to come with him in the first place, anyway. He didn't know who Dean thought he'd been, but it was obvious enough Dean hadn't recognized him. It'd been a good thing Dean hadn't been in any shape to be fighting off a guy half his size; Sam had ended up having to damn near manhandle him out the door. They'd gone a good distance away from the lab, and Sam clearly remembered yanking Dean out of the way of a falling light fixture when he'd barely heard Dean say, Sammy over the crash of glass and metal. After that-after that, Sam had been pretty sure that even if Dean could've stood on his own, he probably wouldn't have let go of Sam.
But they never talked about that night. Sam couldn't tell how much Dean remembered. He suspected not much, and he suspected that Dean wanted to know, too. It wasn't that Sam didn't want to tell him; there simply hadn't been a right time to sit there and swap stories. Plus, there was never going to be a not awkward way to ask, Tell me about that time the world ended and you found me broken and half-dead strapped to a table.
That, and Sam had learned not to look back. They were here. They'd made it out, for whatever that was worth when out meant nothing more than an equally crappy world that everyone had to share because there was nothing else.
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Sam adjusted the duffle strap; he hadn't been able to switch sides because of his arm and when you were dragging crap along for several days straight, discomfort was bound to happen. And the bullet wound should've been better by now, but it wasn't. He hadn't mentioned it to Dean. Considering Dean was always right there even when he wasn't the one checking the bandaging, he was sure Dean knew without having to be told. There was no way Dean could've missed the ragged, puffy edges of broken skin, the streaks of red radiating away from the site of injury that was a sure sign of spreading infection. He probably hadn't missed the way Sam was slowing down more than usual, either.
Not that Sam was big on hiding that something was wrong. Grin and bear it in the field, yeah, but covering up how much you were hurt was one of the stupider things you could do when it came to the more serious stuff. It misled someone into depending on you more than they should, thereby possibly getting everyone killed. Really not something he wanted to risk.
So when they ducked into another building for a short break, he brushed off the broken glass and sat down on what used to be a bar stool before announcing bluntly, "I think I'm getting a fever."
They didn't have a thermometer, but they didn't need one. He could more than feel the flush, had shrugged off his jacket a couple of miles back. It wasn't the first time he'd caught an infection, not even the second or the third. The hunter's brand of field med-the kind where they avoided hospitals until death was up next on the list-meant that sometimes, you just couldn't avoid it. They just often had the antibiotics and disinfectants on hand to treat it. This time, not so much.
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"From the gunshot?" Dean asked, even though there wasn't a lot other reasons he could think of. Sam could, of course, just get sick like a normal human, but he wanted to say it was that gunshot wound getting infected. Dean unconsciously had a hand on his brother's good shoulder, his touch gentle as if he was handling glass - and he might as well be, especially when these days all he had to do was squeeze too hard on accident and crush Sam's skin to the bone. He glanced from the injured shoulder to Sam's face.
He did look flushed slightly, even as there was a thin sheet of sweat beading his brother's forehead and upper lip that had nothing to do with the day's travel. Dean tried to remember what Sam told him about infections, fevers. He was surprised to realized that a lot of what he knew, it didn't really have "Fever and how to deal with it" in there - Sam probably had been more concerned with making sure he could set a broken bone or do stitches than worry about something like that. Somehow he doubted that harlequin book he read the other night was gonna help him with this.
Dean set Sam's duffle bag down for him. The diner they were sitting in was pretty much half blown out, sand already inching its way across the floor with each passing day, a few skeletons with bits of flesh hanging off still in the blasted booths or on the floor, and the entire kitchen was a scorched mess, as if it'd gone up in flames when doomsday hit. He still didn't know what, exactly, happened when everything ended. War? Dean would've wanted to say nukes, except where was the fallout, the radiation? Demons? Where were they?
Sam might know more about the lab, the events of that first day out of Landels and into the new scorched Earth better than Dean could recall it, but he didn't know the why or the how. All they knew was the majority of the humans out there had been wiped out, and every city they'd traveled to, everything had that deserted, destroyed look since the last one.
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Still. He'd take too much Dean over no Dean, any day.
Dean was handling him like Sam would break apart at the slightest touch, and that was one more thing he hated, too. Illogically, maybe, since he knew why, but...Then again, he couldn't help but think, either, that for the first time, he wouldn't be the one to outlive them both, and there was a certain relief that he couldn't deny.
"Yeah. Bottled water's not really the number one choice for cleaning out a gunshot wound." And the bullet had sat in there awhile, too, with the whole brief thing with Dean getting, well. Shot in the head.
He shifted on his stool, partly to get comfortable and partly to just keep himself awake. He could feel the lethargy catching up to him, but seriously, they couldn't afford to take a break every couple of miles so he could sleep. He knew he hadn't been getting enough, but he'd been managing up until now.
Pushing a plate of mouldy fries and the bag aside, he leaned against the space cleared on the counter. There was no corpse accompanying the plate this time; it must've fallen elsewhere or been dragged off by wild animals. The last diner they'd gone into, he'd seen a coffee mug with a hand curled around it, and no arm attached to the wrist. He'd tried to determine what might've happened there, but there were too many options to choose from. Sam hadn't actually been out here when all this went down. He had no idea what'd happened outside, what might've started it. If he had the presence of mind to investigate, he might've turned up a theory or two, but-what was the point?
Though he supposed, looking back now, he realized there'd been signs. It'd been too quiet, everything too routine and slow. He should've known, but he hadn't, in the same way he should've known Stanford would never last, but didn't because foresight was never about knowing so much as it was about bringing yourself to acknowledge what was painfully obvious.
It was just as hot inside here, and he knew it wasn't about the temperature, could feel himself sweating just a bit, though not in a way that meant the fever had broken. He'd only be so lucky. No, his temperature was gonna keep shooting up and they had nothing to keep it down with. No ice, barely any water, never mind cold water. He knew the chills would set in eventually, too. Sam had been bitten and shot and stabbed, but the hot and cold of a fever? That was right at the top of the list as one of the things he tried extremely hard to avoid.
Which meant they couldn't stay here. They had to move before the infection set in even further, see if they could find-hell , a drug store or someone's medical cabinet, anything at all. A dentist office would do, too; they had to have something. Odds were, it'd be raided clean by now, but there was always a chance. It was better than doing nothing.
He took a drink of water, then shouldered his duffle bag and slid off the stool. "We should keep going. You've seen any hospitals or doctor's offices when you were scoping out the area?"
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He thought back to the recent scouting runs he’d gone on. A lot of office buildings, a lot of computers that all didn’t work (even the rare intact ones couldn’t without electricity, something he hadn’t seen in awhile now), a recent corpse of one of those wild dogs that Dean didn’t think was safe to eat, at least for Sam, not with the hundreds of wiggling maggots beating him, getting at the animal before he could. Most of the building ruins tended to look a lot alike to Dean and he had to think back for that extra second; “Found a pet clinic a few miles out southwest of here. That’s the closest thing I’ve seen in days.”
Especially when Sam couldn’t cover the ground he could…and that was when he was one hundred percent healthy. Dean had no idea how much or how fast he could travel when he was trying to fight off a fever getting worse by the day (by the hour?). There was always going back the way they came, but it was miles to go before they could get to any of the hospitals Dean had seen so far. That was the whole problem with being dead these days. Dean could keep walking and walking, go right over or through huge mountains of rubble from where a skyscraper collapsed across a street into another, and doing it so much, doing it almost every night that it screwed up his sense of time. It just wasn’t the same anymore when you didn’t, couldn’t, sleep, and that everything was centered around always moving, never resting. Sometimes - and it was happening more often than not now - sometimes he forgot that a few hours of travel for him was possibly days for his brother. Dean knew he’d forgot a lot about his past life, that those holes might not be able to be fixed, only filled in with whatever he could pick up from the scraps of newspapers or the books he could find; he just had thought he’d always be able to keep pace with Sammy. If he kept himself grounded with all these books, he’d stop feeling like week after week of living as demon was making him unable to understand how time ran for humans like his brother. If he got too used to time meaning less to him, it could be fatal for Sam.
Dean wondered if they should just find a place to set camp right now, despite the fact it still had light out. Usually he did whatever Sam told him to do. Now he was wondering if it’d be smarter to dig in his feet and insist that no, it’d be better if Sam rested and he went to find the pet clinic. Or he could maybe range further out and see if he could find a real hospital. But what about the fever? What if something happened while he was gone?
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He started to reach up to wipe the blood and clear fluid leaking from his forehead, going on auto-pilot, only to remember last night he’d finally gotten the idea to cover it. Obviously he couldn’t get infected - or, he could, but the bacteria and whatever else made home in it wasn’t gonna do anything to him - but if they ran into any more survivors, they’d know something was wrong if they saw a big gaping hole there. Dean had no intention of letting any salvagers get away, not when they had stuff he could take to give to Sammy, but it’d save a lot of having to chase them down if they didn’t see the big gunshot and get tipped off. The dirty bandage he’d wrapped around his head to cover the wound was starting to seep through with blood and that same clear liquid, but at least it was something. He didn’t look like a dead man walking, at least not from just a first glance. Dean looked down at his wrist, the knife-cut still bleeding, but only barely now. He wasn’t sure if it’d have to be reopened so Sammy could get what he needed.
If it helped Sam with his blackouts, then maybe it’d help with the fever? Dean had no clue if it’d help. It was at least something they could try.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep traveling if you’ve got a fever,” Dean said, trying to be careful about not just going that’s a stupid idea, Sammy like some almost forgotten part of him wanted to. He didn’t want Sam to decide he’d had enough of him and this was it…even though if Sam took off, Dean wouldn’t be that far behind, keeping an eye on him. Always ready to step in and watch his back, whether he wanted it or not. “Got ourselves some options, way I see it: I could check around for a hospital, bring back whatever you need if I find it. Or we could give you this,” he nodded at the bloodied edge of jacket, not bothering to peel it back, “and see if maybe it’d help.”
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Then again, he never thought he'd end up living in a post-Apocalyptic world or that Dean would end up a demon, so Sam wasn't the best judge of these things.
But Dean had a point. It wasn't necessary for him to come with when Dean could go and come back on his own. If anything, he'd only slow them both down. Past experience said that he could easily pass out halfway there; dehydration didn't do wonders for the body when you were already fighting off an infection and Sam knew he was running on the bare minimum of liquids, if even that much.
He didn't-he wasn't sure how he felt about Dean taking off, that was all. It already put him on edge before when Dean would leave which was why he tried to use that time to sleep so that he wouldn't wear a hole in the floor pacing. With what'd happened barely a week ago, sleep was almost out of the question whenever Dean left now. He couldn't stop Dean from doing his usual sweeps during the nights without raising too many questions; it seemed too...too ridiculous to bring it up, so he let Dean go as always, but right now, he didn't need one more thing to worry about. The thought of, What if you don't come back clung too strongly, and he wasn't even certain if he was worried about another bullet taking Dean out or if a part of him was afraid Dean would decide not to return. He liked to think it was the former.
The second option, though.
Sam's gaze gravitated towards the bloody cuff on instinct. Dean offered it so easily, so matter-of-fact, when Sam knew that Dean From Before never would've even considered it. Did he even realize how wrong it was?
Probably not. Not when he tore people apart without batting an eye.
And yeah, he wanted it, could almost taste it, but he knew he didn't need it when he'd gone to Ruby not too long ago. If Ruby's blood wasn't doing anything to keep the infection at bay-if it even could do anything at all in the first place-then Dean's wouldn't. Besides, he already felt guilty taking the blood when Dean had been down. If it'd been Ruby in front of him, Sam wouldn't have thought twice, but that was the point. He didn't want to start seeing his brother as some kind of walking demonic blood bank. He'd already screwed up enough between them.
"No." He tore his eyes away and sat back down, pushing Dean's hand away, a little rougher than he'd intended. He sat back down, suddenly torn between wanting to go with Dean and needing to distance himself before he gave in.
"No, go ahead. I'll be here. Just...be back in forty-eight hours. Even if you don't find anything." The speed that Dean travelled, if two days yielded nothing, there was nothing to be found. "And hey-" He caught the sleeve of Dean's jacket before Dean could leave, trying to soften his earlier response. "No more headshots, okay?"
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Thinking about it, he could barely even remember what a vampire looked like these days. He hadn't seen one in a long time.
The end of world hadn't exactly done wonders for bringing them back - kinda hard to survive when your food source was almost wiped out and you were competing with the other monsters out there trying to claw out a living. Dean remembered some of his hunts, remembered saving people from evil like vampires. He did remember somehow it bothered him a lot to see these things preying on others, remembered and didn't know why it bothered him then, only that it did. There wasn't much of a difference between what vampires did and what Sam had to do, except there was. Dean was already dead. Sam could take all he wanted, drink him dry, and Dean was ninety-nine percent sure he'd still be walking after. Without it, Sam would start blacking out on him again. Maybe he'd even black out and not wake up. He wasn't willing to put that to the test either way. Dean chewed on the inside of his mouth without even thinking about it, running a hand through his hair.
"This place doesn't have good cover," Dean said. He didn't ask about Sam not wanting his blood right now - he was gonna get it, Dean decided, whether he wanted it now or later and he was pretty sure the stuff didn't have to be freshly bled for it to still keep Sam conscious, considering the fact it wasn’t exactly fresh when it came out in the first place. He turned away to check their duffel bag, hoping that the half-burned map he'd snagged from the motel ruins down the street would have something to help him narrow down his search or something when Sam stopped him, fingers grabbing at his sleeve.
Dean turned questioningly toward his brother. His mouth turned up in a slight grin.
“Wasn’t planning on it, Sammy.”
If he got nailed again, he might as well be dead for real this time: he’d be stuck screaming in his own paralyzed corpse and Sam would have no idea where to find him.
There wasn’t a lot that scared the shit outta him anymore, aside from losing Sam, but that one almost made him feel an impossible shiver go up his broken spine.
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Dean came back from the bathroom.
“That’s the only place you can hole up in,” he said as he ducked down behind the counter, rooting through the rubble and the blasted plastic, blackened and melted from whatever hit the joint. It took a few minutes of determined searching but he struck gold, coming up with a cup that somehow survived. He moved around the counter and stood over one of the tables, ignoring the headless skeleton slouched over it as he rolled up his sleeve, took his bowie knife, and cut a deep line in his arm, trying to make sure he hit a major artery. Alive, he’d be gushing blood. Being dead made it different: if he didn’t cut for an artery, he’d barely bleed out at all. Dean clinched and unclenched his arm, black eyes looking down as he aimed the drip of blood into the cup and digging in deeper with the bowie knife until he managed, somehow, to get something more than a trickle. The best he could do was only a quarter of the cup before it already started leveling off back into the trickle, forcing him to switch arms and saw into that one until he got the cup half-full. Dean wiped the blade clean on his jeans as he turned to Sam, blood still dripping slowly past the tips of his fingers to splat on the floor, muffled by the thin layer of sand.
“In case you change your mind,” Dean said, with a shrug. He sheathed the knife, pushing his sleeves down to cover his arms again as he stepped past Sam, stooping to pick up the Ruger. If carrying a gun again meant not getting shot in the head again and getting his brains blown out a second time around, then he’d carry the damn rifle everywhere.
Dean couldn't do Sam any good if he was lying God knew where with a bullet pinning him to the floor.
He searched for something to say. There was always that weird feeling he should say something smartass, like it was right there on the tip of his tongue and if he just waited a little longer, it’d pop out. Sometimes it did. Today it didn’t. Instead, Dean just took a last look at Sam before setting off into the city’s wasteland again.
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He glanced up when Dean came back. He contemplated saying something while Dean rifled through the storage cabinets for-whatever he was searching for. Sam knew he should've been more curious, but he was mostly tired. It wasn't until he heard the steady drip drip drip of liquid hitting plastic that Sam turned around and by then it was too late to protest.
He wasn't sure if he would've.
Sam stared, silent. Dean had to press the cup into his hands before he finally took it. This kind of effectively nullified the entire reason why he hadn't insisted on going with Dean. Nullified the one time he'd somehow managed to turn down the offer of being able to take more. He felt like saying, I told you no for a reason, you jackass, but none of this was Dean's fault, so he didn't.
Instead, he just watched Dean leave, fingers curled almost too tight around the thin plastic cup filled with blood. For a split second, he almost thought Dean would say something first, but his brother was silent and Sam couldn't deny he wasn't too surprised. Dean didn't talk much anymore, not unless he had something to say. He was starting to forget when the last time he couldn't get Dean to shut up was.
Sometimes he thought it was stupid to think like that, though. At least Dean was here, and he really shouldn't be wanting more when he could've had so much less. But it was hard not to notice everything that was wrong.
Sam waited until Dean disappeared from sight before he slid off the barstool, taking it with him as he slipped into the bathroom that Dean had pointed out earlier. He tried not to trip as he walked, shaking off a wave of light-headedness. The area was confined, with only one exit, but that meant there was only one entrance, as well. Just one point he'd have to keep an eye on. He set the cup on the edge of the sink, rusted and covered with dried blood and shut the broken door. There was enough of it intact for him to wedge the stool under the doorknob. He doubted anyone would check the bathroom, anyway, if they went into the diner at all. Public restrooms never had much. Sometimes the people had stuff worth looting, but by now-it wasn't worth going in and putting up with the stifling air or the mass of corpses. People fled into the bathrooms a lot. Sam couldn't quite say why. Maybe it was the confined space. Somewhere to hide.
He settled down against the wall, ignoring the filthy floor beneath him. He kept close to the door, but out of the line of fire of anyone stepping through, his Glock in hand as usual. The cup of blood sat beside him next to his pack. It looked a little absurd, like Here is a piece of Dean to stay with you while he's away and as a bonus, it's edible. He pushed it out of sight for a minute or two until he couldn't pretend it didn't exist anymore and he dipped a finger into it, licking the blood off. Cold now, but since when did that matter?
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God.
Something in him snapped, temper getting the better of him. He didn't know if it was physical or not. It could've been; he sure as hell felt the urge to throw the damn thing. All he knew was that the cup went flying, contents splattering the door, and there was a wholly unsatisfying hollow smack of plastic against wood and he didn't feel any better after.
Dean should've found a real glass.
Faint, rusted red edged his cuticles and stained his nails. Sam resisted the temptation to lick it off, simply scratching at it uselessly, watching dusts of red flake to the tile floors. He wondered if Dean would see and ask about what the hell Sam did with his blood. It occurred to him, though, that Dean could very well see but just not understand enough to care to ask.
How long had Dean been gone, anyway? He realized he hadn't quite been keeping track of the minutes the way he usually did and he could've kicked himself.
They needed a watch. Sam was pretty good at keeping time and he'd only gotten better when the clocks conked out, but he was finding it hard to focus on that right now. He leaned his head back against the wall. He knew he shouldn't let himself sleep. The chances of anyone bursting in was low, but that didn't mean he could get lax about it.
He managed it for awhile. Twenty-four or so hours where he dozed half-awake for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes at most every few hours, but forcing his eyes to stay open was taking more and more effort. The door kept blurring in front of him. He barely noticed when a cockroach slithered over his hand and onto the barrel of the gun. He wasn't so much asleep as dozing in that state where you weren't completely out, but if anyone asked you later what happened, you wouldn't remember jack.
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He didn’t like Sam being left by himself like that, despite the fact he knew he was armed and it wasn’t likely anyone would run into them. Sam had been injured before, more than was normal for people even before doomsday - being dead hadn’t erased all his memories of the aftermath of hunts - but after waking up on that lab table, Dean’s outlook on things had changed. Sam. Everything boiled down to does Sam approve, can Sam do this and will this kill him? These days, that last one got asked a lot more, especially when he realized he didn’t know much about how to put Sam together: hell, he didn’t even know how to put himself back together. Sure, he'd been shown some basic first aid, but he had a suspicion that he wasn't gonna be able to do much if something really serious happened. Dean hadn’t ever said this out loud, but there were some perks to being…whatever he was: the daily hunts for food, supplies? He honestly didn’t need them himself. They were all for Sam and while he didn’t mind at all helping his brother, it seemed like every day he was reminded how fragile he really was. Anything at all could take him out. Even a bullet to the arm. Even a stupid infection.
Dean ranged far. Evening. Then night. He caught a glimpse of stars - they pulsed too bright, alien, and he couldn't name some of them even though he thought he recognized the constellations - before a vicious dust storm swept in, buffeting him as he continued down the freeway. What he wished for, aside from Sam not getting infected 'cause he couldn't even control himself from a blood bath, was a damn watch. Being an undead freak meant he was a shit judge of time.
The dust storm slowed him down and into his second day, he didn't have anything to show for it. There were no hospitals he could find, the freeway crowded with cars and the corpses instead, trying to flee the end of the world. Some were mummified, others who had their windows open picked clean by the birds that used to wheel in the sky. There weren't any now. They'd used to wheel above Dean the first week or so since he'd been out of the labs and Landels, but eventually whatever animal sense they had tipped them off that he wasn't exactly a meal on wheels.
Dean still checked the cars. Most of them had that burned-out husk look, as if whatever hit the city had hit them point blank range. None of them were gonna be useful.
There wasn't anything out here. At least nothing he could reach in the time he had.
Dean headed back, defeated. What was he supposed to do? For being possibly immortal, it didn't seem like he could actually do anything useful. Getting killed didn't mean he couldn't hate himself. Sammy wouldn't have gotten shot if he'd just learned to sit his ass down and not just...just wig out and lose control of himself. Sam didn't say anything, but he didn't need to. Dean didn't think his old self ran around, bashing in people's skulls. It was night again by the time he made his way back to the diner, the Ruger slung across his back as he stepped inside and headed for the bathroom. It was the sight of something dark staining the thin layer of sand over the tiles in front of the locked bathroom door. It took a second to realize it was blood, seeping out from under the door.
His heart couldn't beat, no matter how much he wished it could. But Dean felt the real fear, felt it rise up, strangling him in a way nothing else could, and he lunged for the door, grabbing the doorknob and push it open. He barely registered the slight resistance he met from the blocked door as he forced it open without even thinking.
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