Idumea - Part II of III
Title: Idumea - Part II of III
Author:
hopeintheashes
Rating: PG-13 for language and content; see warnings
Genre/pairing: Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean; also featuring John, Pastor Jim, the little girl, and the woman.
Word count: 2,600 out of 7,500
Summary: Blood has a gravity that’s stronger than the sun’s; a tether that keeps pulling him back. Set very early in Season 2 and Pre-Series.
Warning: Highlight to read. ( skip) Suicidal ideation, including in a child.
Disclaimer: These boys? Definitely not mine.
A/N: Full notes in Part I. Many thanks to my beta, kat_of_rafters.
Also available on AO3.
Part I
Part II:
Part II
He’s woken just before dawn by a nightmare. It’s normal; almost welcome. Running through the woods from something with teeth and claws he can handle, as long as he doesn’t have to face that little girl again. He steadies his breathing; remembers that they’re back in the Midwest. He’s lost track of where. There’s just enough light to make out the other bed. It’s empty. He flips on the bedside lamp and eyes the salt lines. Intact. Their car is still visible through the window. Sam steps outside, welcoming the coolness of the morning air. There’s a stream off to his left, past the motel on the side away from the road. It’s surrounded by thorns and weeds, and the water’s throwing back the morning light in between brambles and long, thin leaves.
Dean’s crouched down in the tall grass with one hand in the water, letting the current play through his fingers. He’s got a cigarette in the other hand, and as Sam approaches, he can see the rest of the slightly-crushed pack on top of Dean’s flannel shirt. They’ve both been flung to the side. Wisps of smoke rise up into the early morning fog.
Dean doesn’t smoke very often, at least not front of Sam. He doesn’t like the lectures. Since the accident, though… well, Sam knows enough to pick his battles. The argument always comes back to the same sticking point, anyway: “Seriously, Sam, you think cancer’s gonna get me before some demon or black dog?” Sometimes he has a reasonably witty comeback, but he’s always left with this sick feeling he can’t quite describe. He knows they’re likely to die young and bloody, and he supposes there’s some honor in that. Gonna save the world, Sammy. Save the world or die tryin’. He’s just not sure how to apologize to Dean for the way he pictures the two of them sometimes, old and not too terribly broken. Alive. It’s harder to see these days, but Sam hasn’t given up just yet.
When Dean looks back, his eyes are like that little girl’s. Beyond crying. Just… beyond. He looks at Sam, his face unreadable, and then walks back to the motel without saying a word. Sam gives him a minute, going down to the water and dipping his hand in the stream. When he gets back, Dean’s in the shower, then out the door. He returns with coffee, and they drink it without really looking at each other. They’ve always been good at this game.
. . .
The time between, after it had been decided that Sam was leaving but before he’d actually gone, had been full of mornings like these. There’d been coffee and newspapers and the three of them looking at anything other than the others’ eyes. Dad would bark out orders, and he and Dean would go into battle, leaving Sam with stacks of ancient books. It was a natural division of labor: the student and the soldiers. But after, in the in-between, it felt like Dad and Dean were leaving him behind as… punishment. Not that he wanted to go with them, not really, but it felt like they’d already written him off.
Sam left for Blue Earth on a bus. He understood why, he really did: there was something going after little kids down in Georgia, and it wasn’t going to wait for them to make a detour halfway across the country in the wrong direction. Still, something inside him hardened as he looked out the bus window. They were already walking away, Dean looking back, Dad looking ahead. They’d both hugged him at the bus station, Dad briefly (“You don’t give Jim trouble, and you come when we call, you got that?”); Dean holding on (“Find that smart girl of yours and get laid, right, Sammy?” and then, quiet, “Good luck”). None of them had actually said goodbye.
Didn’t want to tempt fate.
. . .
The year away was… eye-opening. He made friends, took his SATs, went to prom (and yes, got laid, although not on the same night), and, somewhere in the middle of all that, applied to college. He kept quiet about that part in his brief conversations with Dean. Things were strained enough between them. From what he gathered, Dad had reacted to his departure by taking every hunt he could get his hands on. “Well, we’re not so tied down anymore,” he’d told Jim, and Sam, listening in from the other room with the mouthpiece turned up above his head so they wouldn’t hear him breathe, had had to bite down on the tip of his tongue. From what Sam could put together, they would drive a full day and night to chase down a lead, and if it turned out to be a hoax or a nutjob or a good old-fashioned murderer, they would pack up and go hurtling across the country in some other direction, just as far and just as fast. Dean sounded more tired every time he called. One night, Sam jerked awake at one a.m. to the sound of a ringing phone. Even though he knew it was almost certainly for the pastor-usually bad news, but so far never for him-he went out into the hallway. This time, Jim’s door opened as well, and he approached Sam with a sad sort of smile. “It’s for you.”
Sam had taken the call downstairs in Jim’s office, socks slipping on the wooden steps as he ran. He grabbed the phone. “What happened?”
“Sammy!” The word was breathless and imprecise, but seemed happy enough.
“Dean? What’s going on?”
“Nothin’. I just-” He broke off coughing, wet and awful.
“Jesus, Dean.”
“I just wanted to-to call you.”
Sam squeezed his eyes shut and let himself fall into Jim’s desk chair. This was wrong. Wrong in ways that made his stomach seize, that made him want to drop the phone and crawl back into bed. Look after your brother, Dean. Never the other way around.
“Sammy? Are-did you-” -a ragged breath- “still there?”
“Yeah.” Fuck, what was he supposed to do about this halfway across the country? “Where are you?”
“Motel, where’d’ya think?” Dean began to laugh and wound up choking.
“Yeah, but where-”
He was cut off by the bang of a door, a muffled “Goddammit, Dean,” and the phone being wrestled out of Dean’s hand. “But it’s Sammy, Dad!”
“And what the hell good did you think he’d be able to do?”
“I just-you were gone-”
“No. He’s gone. Get that through your head.” Sam was breathing hard by then, trying to hold back angry tears. Just before Dad hung up the phone, getting quieter as the receiver got farther away, he heard, softer, gentler, “He’s gone, but I’m here. Come on. Come on.”
Sam sat back, shaking. He didn’t sleep that night.
. . .
He finally broke the news in June.
“It’s not forever, Dean.” Quiet, looking over from the passenger’s seat, through the dark.
No yelling this time. Just a shaky breath and a few silent tears illuminated in a single set of oncoming headlights. Because Sam hadn’t yet figured out what Dean already knew: Yes, Sammy. Yes, it is.
Fifteen miles of silence, and then: “Don’t tell Dad.” Dean’s voice was steady now, his hands over-tight on the wheel. “Not yet.”
. . .
“You had a whole year, Sam. A whole goddamn year. Time’s up.”
September 15. Bus tickets in his pocket to Palo Alto, California. Bags packed. Time was up. He’d had to tell Dad.
At first, Dad had laughed, like maybe he was the victim of some practical joke. But then he’d looked at Dean, sitting with his head down and his eyes averted, and at Sam, standing at his full height (he was as tall as Dad now, and still growing), looking back defiantly.
“You had your year, but that’s over. You’re done. You are part of this family, goddammit. You do not get to walk out on us again.”
Sam glanced at Dean. His brother’s eyes were pleading, apologizing, but there was anger in there as well. Anger and hurt and betrayal. Sam turned back to Dad. “I’m going. You don’t get a say.”
There was a moment when Dad didn’t move; when he stood still in front of Sam, fists clenched, rage building. Sam braced himself. Dad would win in a fistfight, but Sam could make a good showing and then get the hell out the door. Could even grab his bags on the way out. His hand went to the bus tickets in his pocket: secure. This was it, then. He began to raise his fists, feet ready to take the impact and then to run. Dad wasn’t looking at him anymore, though. His narrow, furious gaze had settled on Dean.
“You knew about this?” Dean wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dad took a few steps toward him, his voice rising. “You let him think this was really going to happen? And when the fuck were you going to tell me?” He was right on top of Dean by then, hands on his collar, dragging him to his feet. “The fuck were you thinking? What the fuck, Dean!” A hard thud, and the breath left Dean’s lungs in a soft, stifled moan as Dad slammed him up against the wall. And Dean took it, eyes closed, lips at the ready to say “yes, sir” or “no, sir,” and maybe Dean couldn’t see how fucked up this all was, but Sam was done. He threw himself at Dad, all of his weight behind it, knocking him away from Dean. As he opened his mouth to speak, a fist came up to meet his jaw. He staggered, but stayed on his feet. Dad had never hit him before. In training, yes, but never in anger. Dean had always stepped in to diffuse the situation before it got to that point; had been able to send Dad off to the bar or Sam out for a run. Tonight, he didn’t move. Punishment for Sam leaving them. Again.
“This,” he got out, the adrenaline masking the pain enough to keep his jaw moving for a few more minutes. “This is what I’m getting the fuck away from.” He looked over at Dean, who had slid down the wall and was sitting on the floor. “You should come too.” Dean just closed his eyes again. Sam grabbed his bag with shaking hands, but his voice was steady. “Well. You know where I’ll be.”
“If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back.” Dad’s voice was different now. Quieter, but with no less anger.
Sam turned back to him, to Dean slumped against the wall, to a filthy motel room and half-cleaned guns and the stench of whiskey and sweat and blood, to the life that had been thrust upon him. The life he could choose to leave. He wiped a slow stream of blood away from his mouth and picked up his bags.
“I won’t.”
. . .
He hadn’t. At first, there’d been occasional phone calls with Dean, but they were short and tense and faded away. He’d moved on with his life. He and Jess. And then Dean had shown up in the middle of the night, a shadowy figure moving through the dark, and there’d been a case, a hunt, a burning. And then the fire. And he’d been right back where he’d started, like those four years of freedom had never happened, save for Jess and the stab in his gut every time he thinks of her.
So here they are, Dean with a debt he can never repay and Sam feeling like he had back in Jim’s office, wanting to pull the covers tight over his head and wait for the storm to blow itself out. He’s not seventeen anymore, though. Not seventeen, imagining an easy escape; not five or six or seven, fearing the monsters under the bed but coming to understand that they couldn’t possibly be real. Not ten or fifteen or twenty, believing that his big brother was invincible. Must be invincible, must never be in need of protecting, because otherwise, how could he have left?
Blood has a gravity that’s stronger than the sun’s; a tether that keeps pulling him back. They’re driving a badly lit road through some nameless town when Sam realizes, again, that he can’t escape. That no matter how many times he runs, he’ll always end up back here, in the passenger’s seat in the middle of the night, chasing down something that won’t give in without a fight. It’s like that king from Greek mythology, pushing the boulder up the hill but always finding himself back at the start. And am I born to die, to lay this body down? To die young and bloody, but with honor, Sam. To go down fighting, and to have no one left here to remember his name.
He wants to run. It’s an awful thought, leaving Dean here alone with his grief, but he wants to catch the next bus to Palo Alto, to have Jess and Stanford and a position at a law firm, to get married and have a house (fuck, a house, he’s never had a house, never in memory) and-
- and everything else that’s impossible, gone up in smoke, so that he’s here with nothing and no one but his brother, who’s trying so fucking hard to keep it together, but the cracks are showing, and Sam’s not sure what to do if (when) Dean shatters.
. . .
The little girl’s standing in shallow ocean waves that kiss her feet and pull the sand from beneath them, one breath at a time. Wait long enough, and it’ll swallow her where she stands. Her back is to shore, face to the setting sun. Portland. Or, more accurately, just west of Portland. He’s not exactly sure how he knows, but it’s sudden and it’s certain, washed in with a rush of fear and anger. Just when Sam thinks he can’t take on any more of her pain, it’s replaced by an empty resignation.
She’s wading out to sea.
. . .
He comes to and he’s drowning, terrified it means that she’s already gone. He’s cold. Shuddering, freezing cold. Dean’s voice is coming through the airless darkness, a hand on his shoulder, holding him down. He fights hard and the hand is gone, raised in quick surrender.
A few more gasping breaths, and he opens his eyes. The road has no shoulder, so they’re halfway in the gravel, and Dean is watching him with the most focus Sam’s seen from his brother in weeks.
“You good?”
Sam shrugs.
“Portland? As in Oregon?”
He must’ve said it out loud.
Dean runs a hand down his face. “We could be done here in another two days if we work fast.”
Sam sighs. “It’s a kid, Dean.”
Dean’s doing the unspeakable mental calculations, weighing one life against another. Or in this case, several others. Several others who may very well be injured by the time they can get another hunter on scene, but who (probably, maybe) won’t die.
There’s a painful, breathless moment when Sam’s sure they’ve been rear-ended, slammed by some oblivious driver flying down the road, but when he looks up, he’s back on the beach. A woman is running headlong into the water, grabbing up the girl, holding her close. Sam expects her to fight back, but the girl is limp. There’s a moment of terrifying uncertainty, then the woman collapses in tears of relief.
He comes back up. “She’s alive.”
“Was that in doubt?”
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yeah.”
“Shit.” Dean sits back in the driver’s seat, pale and exhausted, and then turns to look at Sam. “You gonna puke?”
“Don’t think so.” Dean raises his eyebrows: You’d better be damn sure. “No. I’m good.”
“Alright. You: keep breathing. I’ll call Bobby and see if he can’t send someone over this way. And then… Portland.”
“Portland.”
. . .
. . .
Part III