(no subject)
It's been a while but I've been working on a short SPN story for a couple of months now, and have finally finished it, hope you guys enjoy it.
Title: Cut all the ropes and let me fall
Summary:Post-Apocolyptic.
Word count: 961
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: The boys don't belong to me, however much I beg.
Author’s note: Not exactly a happy story as my mind only ever makes the Winchesters angsty bloody messes.
You miss the rain the most. The world could stop spinning before you stop wishing for the first drop of water to hiss against this dry burnt out land. You wake up from dreams of drowning; sure you can taste the metal flavour in the back of your throat. You were never one for heat, clammy sweat clinging to the back of your neck reminding you all too clearly of nights cramped in a car seat, legs tangled together, the smell of faded leather filling your head as you drifted.
The car finally gave up a week ago, a slow stuttering death that hurt more than anything in these past few months. You’ve been on foot ever since, slow steady progress; only the blisters on your feet and the empty highway behind you assuring that you’re moving forward.
You squat in an abandoned roadside motel for the night, the bed frames broken and bent twisting towards the floor, mattress springs twisting out of the fabric. You spend time attending to the guns, twisting and pulling apart metal, arranging pieces like a question on the dirty wood floor.
The process comes naturally, your fingers deftly re-piecing the guns together, eyes distant, facing the faded wallpapered walls. The grease slicks your fingers and you can feel John’s hands on yours; tanned and weathered skin holding you together from the moment he put the gun in your shaking hands. Your hands falter, metal hitting metal a gunshot to bring you back.
You sleep curled into a corner, leather jacket for a pillow, gripping your namesake to your chest like a secret that can keep your heart from growing cold while you sleep. You dream of white eyes in a face you used to know and wake unsettled tasting salt on your lips, purple sky beckoning you outside. You walk through the night, haunting the empty road, watching scarred buildings twist up to greet you from the darkness until dawn breaks like a bruise blooming over you.
You stop outside a beaten down house, chalk black coating the entire building; a piece of the night still lingering. Your feet are stained red, smeared with blood from your tattered heels; leaving a trail behind you as you walk barefoot up to the coal black door - a map of your existence.
Blackening your hand as you push the door open you step inside, the guns beating the rhythm of your heart against your thighs. Dust coats your face, landing on your eyelashes like snowflakes, dancing in front of your eyes in the shafts of purple light that slice through the room like gunshot wounds.
Fingers trailing along the faded walls map your slow steady circle of the lower floor before you take the stairs, navigating gaps where steps have collapsed. Images of smiling children long broken and burnt away line the walls in twisted and melted metal frames, blackened eyes watching as you pass.
You reach a nursery first, wooden cot broken into splinters that cover the floor. A book of fairytales lies at your feet; pages burnt and torn as though in the middle of being read when the world tore apart. The image sears in your mind; mother and baby burnt away together at bedtime and you can’t breathe, aching stomach heaving you stumble to your knees gagging a prayer into the dust.
You remember how it felt, the end of the world. That small sense of relief at the thought of nothing: just the black and you. It came quietly, no apocalyptic signs, no water to blood, no locusts, and no fiery skies, only the steady burn in your chest any form of warning. During the last few months of earth when blood was all you ever seemed to see, blackened skin around each new wound like a brand of ownership, you used to wonder if when you peeled away the layers of leather and cotton to the black and red mess below you’d be able to see into the hole where that part of you was missing.
If this time you’d be able to find it, to witness it, name it and control it - this is the part of me that disappeared one day in fire and smoke, this is where it belonged, this is where I could fall head first into. You only ever saw blackened skin and your blood, each time you felt that familiar cold stab of pain, thud of your head against stone, wood, brick, it would flare inside you a familiar and welcome promise; this time, this time, this time.
You struggle to your feet with your heart beating a steady rhythm; this time, this time, this time, this time I’ll find him, this time. Your feet falter as your heart stutters its beat and it all floods in through a hairline fracture; destiny, fate, failure and tearing the skies apart for him. Bringing you to your knees again, face first breathing in the remains of the world you destroyed, abandoned, and sacrificed for brother, blood, heart.
It was all for him, you told him over and over until your throat was as bruised and blackened as the world around you. This new world would be yours and yours alone, no darkness, no destiny, no heaven, no hell, just you and your blood, brother, heart. Whispering benedictions to the sky as it fell to its knees before you. Two figures standing on the edge of a world that you’d given so much of yourselves to save destroy and re-create anew.
The world fell to its knees as you fell, as blood, brother, heart turned from you, white eyed, stone faced and disappeared, leaving you choking on the one and only word to ever have any meaning.
Dean.