[Fic] caranfindel: Stapled Shut, Inside an Outside World
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Title: Stapled Shut, Inside an Outside World
Writer: caranfindel
Status of work: complete
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, other canon characters
Rating: PG-13
Warnings, kinks & contents: [Click to read]Language, implied torture
Length: 6400 words
Summary: Sam has learned not to ask questions. Horror AU through 9x02.
Reccer's notes: I haven't yet had time to leave the kind of comment that I want to leave on this fic, but I need to recommend this immediately--or better yet, three weeks ago. This fic takes big risks and strives for high places, and it's one of those exceedingly rare gems where everything pays off and then some. Reading this fic is a psychic mindgame in itself, perhaps for the reader even moreso than the mindfuck Sam rides out in this fic--certainly, we live alongside him, through every whiplash of dark humor, intense love, and ugly tragedy, hellish mirth. This is the kind of fic that doesn't make you want to squirm, or laugh bitterly, or gasp--it makes you squirm and laugh and gasp. It's inventive and thrilling--a word I'm not given to attaching to prose lightly--and it just. It wins everything.
[mild spoiler for fic]Oh, and the first two scenes are totally going to psych you out. Buckle up because trust me, that's only the beginning. >:D
[Short excerpt]"Dean did it!" Bobby laughs. "He found a ritual to bring someone back to earth! He practiced on me and then he said he was going after you. He said he was going to bring you back, like he brought me back."
(Oh, Jesus, no.) "So where is he, Bobby?"
Bobby's face switches from joyful to concerned as quickly as if someone flipped a switch, and Sam has a cold dark feeling in the pit of his stomach. "You didn't see him? He went to Hell, Sam. To get you out. He wasn't with you? He didn't make it out?"
Don't over-examine it, he thinks. Just accept it. It could be real. And if it's real, you get to stay here, and you can figure out a way to rescue Dean.
There's a fine line between a life that sucks enough to be your real life, and a life that sucks so much that it could only be a plot spun in Lucifer's head. Sam has to face it - that line has been crossed. "No," he says. "This isn't real." He steps back, closes his eyes, and the world falls away.
"Oh, come on," says Lucifer. "You've got to admit, that sounds like something Dean would do."