Where I walk alone -- part 1
Rating: R
Warning: torture (though not really that detailed (I think), more to be safe than anything)
Characters: Sam, Dean, John (sort of)
Pairing: No pairing
Disclaimer: I don’t own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Word Count: ~5,600
Beta by Ghost (who else? ;) )
A/N: It started with a picture...
That picture has always been one of my favs of Sam (if not the one I love most), I've often thought about what might be going through his head. Then there was one of those talks with my cybertwin and BAM, just like that, there was a scene that fit. And man, it was a bitch to write, getting that emotional is kind of a first for me, there were times I just hated the story and I almost deleted it cause I couldn't really make sense of it. And then... in comes my Ghosty and we're talking again and tossing sentences and ideas back and forth and suddenly it makes sense. I love her for that, I really, really do. She's written a lot of this fic herself, she's like the "Dean to my Sam" in this and I owe her for getting that stuff out of my head. Man, do I owe her... I'll find a way to make up for it, hun, I swear!
I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
Green Day, Boulevard of broken dreams
Red.
Red and screaming and chains clatter as he fights…
“…no…”
And knives, the knives are the easiest, but always only the start and he doesn’t want to scream, he doesn’t want to, but the sound is pulled from his throat as the blades sink into him…
“…NO…”
“Sam.”
“…no, please…”
Fire is next, and worse than the pain is the smell, and he can taste himself on the smoke and he bucks as much from that as from the hot agony leaping up his arms, his legs, his groi -
“Wake up, Sam.”
“…please, no more…”
“Sam!”
Something touches his arm and he jolts upright, prepared to fight, to hit back, to defend-
“Whoa, SAM! Relax, it’s me!”
And for half a second he sees Dean, he sees reality and sanity… then it’s gone again.
That smile, all teeth and rage and trapped behind that smile as it speaks with his son’s voice. “You’ll grow to like it.” And he wants to hit, wants to fight, but his arms are lashed, strapped, and he’s fought so hard that the skin on his wrists has shredded and raw flesh sings as he pulls against the ties again and again and again. Still, he can’t get loose. If he could get a hand free…. But then it clambers onto his chest, wearing his beloved’s face as it smiles that same dead grin and says, “You gave me your heart once.” And it digs into his chest…
His lungs won’t work, he can’t draw a single breath and he starts to struggle. He lashes out, hits something solid, hears a satisfying grunt.
“God damn it, Sam! Snap out of it! Breathe!”
He jerks, trying to get it off him as it grabs his heart, as it leans forwards and kisses him, all tender lips and bloody fingers. And as he watches it raises his still beating heart to those lips and bites, and his own blood falls into his face as it drips off its chin. And he can’t die. And that’s the worst thing. He can’t die, can’t die, even though he needs to- and it smiles as it sees his comprehension. “Took you long enough,” it says, and strokes the raw hole in his chest with acid laced fingers, and all of him explodes with an agony he had never known existed, an agony that goes beyond the confines of flesh and into eternity, and, not for the first time, he screams…
Something hits his chest, then his back, hard, forcing stale air into his lungs, leaving him coughing for more. He tries to scramble back, terrified by the feeling of his heart beating fast enough to break out of his chest. His body is screaming at him to keep moving, not give it a chance to tie him down.
“Help me!”
He isn’t sure if it’s his own voice pleading with whoever is trying to get a hold of him, or if it’s his voce, lost in that darkness, but he knows he has to get away, get some place safe. And he is free now, and that means he can fight, and it’s dark and he can barely see anything, but he doesn’t care, he can move, he can get away, he can get it off-
And then he can’t, there’s resistance, something is blocking him, keeping him back, suffocating him, too close, too close, too fuckingclosegetoffgetoffmenow!
But it won’t go away, it’s trying to push him down, onto the rack-
TEETHbloodPAINfearAGONY
And while he is still gagging on the remembered stench of sulphur and his own burning flesh he loses it.
One moment he is being held down, unable to move, to breathe- the next he is upright, free of anything that might hold him back. He stumbles forward, shrieking in horror when a claw closes around his ankle and he can’t move. Nononononono, OFF! He kicks back, panic fuelling his strength. Dimly he hears a muffled cry of pain next to him, followed by a curse in what seems to be a completely alien language, but he doesn’t care, tries to move away from that, blinking frantically in the dimly lit room to find a way out. He stumbles forward, blindly groping for something to hang on to as his balance goes south and he has to fight to stay on his feet.
And suddenly he is blind. Unbelievably bright light assaults his eyes and he has a brief flash of not there before his brain groans in protest and his knees give out, crumbling him to the floor as he instinctively wraps his arms around his head to block out the fucking light.
It’s silent, for a long, blessed moment there is not a sound to be heard, not even the screams or the cries or the laughter and he sucks in a shaky breath, flinching when even his own breath is too loud, too close, too real.
“What the fuck, Sam?”
He knows that voice, it’s Dean, his so-brother, sounding as pissed and freaked as he has ever heard him.
He knows the light will be agony on his sore eyes, but he has to look, has to see for himself what has Dean so worked up. He tries to peek out from below his arms and immediately his eyes water and he can feel tears of pain crawling down his cheeks. He blinks rapidly, tries to focus, feels annoyed when he can’t and all he can make out are blurry outlines of various furniture.
“Dean?”
His own voice sounds funny to his ears, too low, too scratchy, too hoarse. He clears his throat and is about to ask-something, but Dean is talking again, his voice-too fucking loud-getting closer.
“What the hell was that? You trying to kill me?”
Oh yeah, Dean’s pissed, barely holding himself together from the sound of his voice. He doesn’t have to see him to know the angry set of his brother’s shoulders as he stalks closer, the way his brows will be drawn together into that frown, the one that says you have about ten seconds before I kick your ass.
And he would answer if he could remember how to form words, how to make them mean something.
“Sam? You okay?” Hesitant worry replaces anger and Dean is next to him, a familiar arm appears in his line of sight and a warm hand squeezes his shoulder. “Sam?”
I’m fine, he wants to say, don’t worry about me, everything’s okay.
The words won’t come, are locked in his throat and refuse to come out. They would have been a lie anyway, he is obviously not okay and no way Dean won’t see that. He settles for the truth then, takes a moment to collect what little is left of his thoughts and says the first thing that comes to his scattered mind.
“Light’s too bright…”
He squeezes the words out from behind clenched teeth and closes his eyes against the sound of them, lets his head drop onto his arm, trusting his brother to turn it off. It doesn’t take long, Dean moves away from him, there is a soft click and the light’s gone-
Dean doesn’t ask him if he’s okay anymore, it would be kind of pointless since they both know he isn’t. There’s an awkward silence and he can’t help but feeling a little crowded, even though his brother is at the other end of the room **and worse than the pain is the smell** and not moving closer. Dean is watching him, standing so still, and even in the dark Sam can feel his eyes, can almost see his worried frown, feel his need to help him somehow.
He doesn’t realize he’s standing until he finds himself putting on his clothes, groping for his shoes next to his bed. He has no idea why he is getting dressed, it’s the middle of the night and he should be sleeping, or at least resting, but he can’t. It’s not the room, there’s no need to get out of there, he won’t go crazy or freak out if he doesn’t leave, but at the same time **it’s still sitting on his chest** he knows he can’t stay here, it would suffocate him if he did and he just wants to be someplace else right now-
“I’m hungry,” Dean says suddenly, unexpectedly, like it’s the most logical thing to say. Sam knows that’s a lie, it’s the middle of the night-except it isn’t, when he looks around the room he can see single beams of early morning light creep through the window. Didn’t they just go to bed?
He watches detachedly as Dean grabs his clothes and disappears into the bathroom **and as he watches it raises his still beating heart to those lips and bites** and there must be some kind of time lapse, because when he blinks his brother is back, dressed, grabbing the car keys from the small table by the window and he looks over at him where he is still sitting on his bed. Dean catches his gaze and nods at the door, jiggling the keys. “Get in the car, Sam.”
He doesn’t understand right away, hears the words but can’t quite catch their meaning, his brain too dazed and overwhelmed… by what exactly he can’t even say. But Dean is leaving, the door open behind him, and not talking actually sounds very good ** the skin on his writs has shredded and raw flesh sings as he pulls against the ties** and being in the car sounds even better and so he just follows his brother out of the room.
Reality and his surroundings catch up with him what might be a whole life-time but is probably only about ten minutes later and he finds himself sitting in the car. The Impala is parked on the parking lot of a diner and a battered neon-sign is flashing at him that “Yes, we open”. He stares at the letters, knows something’s wrong with them, the grammar isn’t quite right, but then cold air hits his face **and all of him explodes with an agony he had never known existed** and the door next to him isn’t closed anymore.
“Come on, get out, I’m starving.”
He must have moved, must have followed Dean into the diner on autopilot, he doesn’t remember. He nods when Dean asks him something-probably if he wants to eat something cause why else would you go into a diner, and it’s only when he looks down at the greasiest, smelliest sausage sandwich he has ever seen that he realizes his stomach is so cramped he can just barely keep himself from tossing his cookies right there. He stares helplessly at the soggy mass, then his eyes crawl up slowly to meet Dean’s even gaze. And he knows he’s fallen into that trap, Dean had set him up;, he’d known Sam wouldn’t be able to eat and ordered that thing just to force him to admit he is not okay. And man, he wants to be mad, scowl at him, prove him wrong cause he’s no kid anymore who needs to be looked after, but just staying awake and keeping himself together soaks up his strength and leaves him feeling embarrassingly weak.
And so he simply pushes the disgusting sandwich across the table at his brother and leans back, closing his eyes for a moment as his tired bones try to arrange themselves into a comfortable position. He ends up more or less slouching into the corner of his side of the booth, one arm propped up on the table to keep his head from crashing face-first onto it. He’s so fucking tired he can barely keep his eyes open, all he wants to do is to get some sleep, to black out and find some peace and quiet. Everything around him feels so distant, disconnected, as if he’s seeing it through a stranger’s eyes, it doesn’t really concern him, isn’t real enough to touch him.
“So?”
The voice pulls him back and he looks up. Dean wasn’t lying before, he had been starving, when Sam finally focuses on him the sandwich is gone and Dean is wiping his fingers on the napkin. Watching him, waiting for something.
“So?” He echoes softly after a moment, not really sure what he missed.
Dean raises an eyebrow, the way he usually does when he warns people not to play with him. “So, can we talk about what that was now?”
He stares at Dean, his sluggish mind still caught on trying to figure out what he could possibly mean. They’ve just arrived here and-
He recoils when he remembers, the dreams, the pain-fear-agony-
And of course Dean sees him flinching back, and he can see the worry in Dean’s eyes so clearly; but he wants nothing more than to hide from it. It’s not like this is something he can tell Dean. Ever. Dean can’t know.
“It was just a bad dream…” he mumbles quietly, wincing when the lie almost gets caught in his throat.
Dean doesn’t buy it, of course not, why would he?
“’Bad dream’. Right.” Dean is staring openly at him now, thumping a fork on the table. His voice is low, matter-of-fact, but his eyes lose nothing of their intensity. “You had nightmares after Jess.”
He feels himself flinch, again, hopes Dean doesn’t notice but knows he does.
“You had nightmares before Jess.”
It isn’t meant as an accusation, in some not-half-asleep part of his brain he knows that, but still the words make him wince and he feels them all the way down to his soul. Not this, please God, not this, now, on top of everything-
Dean isn’t done. “None of these times did I see you wake up crying… shouting her name, yeah, but not crying.”
Funny, he doesn’t remember that, crying never helped anybody and neither did begging them to leave you alone. They wouldn’t listen, they never listened. Like now. He isn’t choosing not to talk, he can’t…he can’t add to the crap Dean’s dealing with right now. Losing him-Dad-almost destroyed his brother and the past two weeks have been hard on him. He had been watching Dean. Waiting for the moment his brother would finally accept his help or at least his presence again, would let him be there for him. That moment never came, though, Dean has been keeping him out, keeping him away. This, right now, is actually the first time since he watched Dean take that tire iron to his car that they are sharing the same room without one of them pretending to already be asleep.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on?”
No.
It’s instant, it’s so loud in his head he is surprised he doesn’t say it out loud.
No. He can’t, he won’t talk about it.
Ever.
part 2