Exodus 1/1
Exodus
Summary: Sam goes for a walk. Genesis 'verse stand-alone. Post-Hell AU
A/N: Apparently my sadness at the show ending is a motivation for fanfic.
XXX
Thunder. Galloping closer and closer, crawling up the back of Sam's neck and trying to climb into his ears. It's heavy and it wants to crush him. Sam doesn't like it. Everything was quiet before and now it's loud, loud like Lucifer's true form, like Lucifer's real voice, like melting eyeballs, bursting eardrums, like flames and blades and shrieks.
Sam presses his palms to his ears but it's too late. The thunder has already cantered into his brain, filling up the inside of his skull, flooding into all the empty places, uncontrollable as the ocean, but it flows and flows and never ebbs.
“Sam?”
Sam is fists and feet, nails and teeth. He is the thunderstorm. He's a volcano, an exploding star, a violent, eternal collision. He screams fire and lava, and dissolves into ash.
XXX
“What were you thinking?” Dean tsks, pressing Sam down onto Bobby's couch.
“I wasn't,” Sam says, because he doesn't remember thinking anything. He was driftwood, dragged by the tide, dandelion fluff caught in a breeze, the Impala, heading to the horizon.
Dean's worry is creased into the corners of his eyes, the edges of his mouth. He shakes exhaustion from his features and pretends it no longer exists. “You scared the hel- the crap outta me, Sammy. If Bobby hadn't found you...”
Bobby kicks the heater in the corner of his living room until it splutters to life and a slippery serpent of warmth slithers out onto the carpet. There are scratches down the side of his face. Sam looks down at his own fingernails and the blood beneath them.
“I'm sorry, he says but Bobby waves his words away. Sam watches them flutter to the floor.
“Don't you worry about me, kid,” Bobby says. “I'm gonna make you a hot drink. Just stay put and let Dean take care of your feet.”
His feet? “What's wrong with my feet?” Sam tries to lean forward to look but Dean nudges him back, settling down on the floor in front of him with Bobby's medical kit.
“What's wrong is that you decided to go wandering off down the road with no shoes on,” Dean grumbles. “Can't you feel it?”
“Should I?” Before, he was feeling too much and then, not enough. Sam's not sure if he'll ever get the hang of feeling things again. It's all so complicated.
Dean lifts one of Sam's legs to inspect the sole of his foot closely, dabbing at it with a piece of gauze. “If I had this much glass in my feet, I'd definitely feel it.”
“Oh.” Sam looks at the raised leg. His foot is adorned with rubies, glinting red. It drips tiny jewels that sink into the carpet fibres. Dean pulls a pair of tweezers from the medical kit.
“Are you okay if I get started?” he asks. “It might hurt - I could give you something first?”
“Give me something?” Sam frowns. What could he possibly need?
“Painkillers,” Dean explains. “You know, aspirin or whiskey or whatever. Something to make the pain go away.”
“It's not supposed to go away,” Sam points out. He knows that much for sure. Pain is supposed to be constant.
Dean purses his lips but says nothing, cradling Sam's foot in his lap. He pinches a shard of glass with the tweezers and tugs gently. It slides free from the sole of Sam's foot without resistance.
“Will you pull out all my bones?” Sam asks, grotesquely intrigued as the bloodied piece tinks into a bowl on Bobby's coffee table.
Dean's head jerks up. “What? No. No, Sam, it's just glass.”
“Oh yeah.” Sam remembers now, even though he can't remember how the glass got there. Maybe it was Lucifer. Probably it was Lucifer.
Bobby comes back into the room with a blanket and a steaming mug. The blanket feels like angel wings when it's draped around Sam's shoulders; warm, scratchy feathers, soft down. The mug is hot and it makes Sam notice how cold his fingers are. He sips at the steamy liquid and tastes chocolate, not coffee. It warms him from the inside and the blanket warms him from the outside and, suddenly, Sam is afraid that it might all go away.
“I can't remember how gravity works,” he tells Dean urgently, leaning forward to grasp his brother's wrist. “What if I float away again?”
Dean pauses his work. He sets the tweezers aside and covers Sam's hand with his own. Another blanket, another warmth.
“If you do,” Dean says, “I'll come find you. Okay? Always.”
The fluttery insects in Sam's stomach are soothed. He relaxes back into the couch cushions. “Maybe I need ruby slippers,” he suggests.
Dean smirks. “Do you want ruby slippers, Sam? Because I can get you ruby slippers.”
Sam shrugs. He's tired and thoughts are slipping in and out too fast for him to think them.
“There's no place like home,” he murmurs.
Dean pats his hand and goes back to tweezing. “Damn straight, Dorothy.”
END