Supernatural: waiting and better days (1/1) PG-13
Title: Waiting and Better Days (1/1)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Genre/Characters: Gen - Dean (Lisa, Ben)
Warnings: angst
Spoilers: coda to 5.22
Word count: 3,320
Summary: This isn't the easy choice, the idyllic life.
Note: Thanks to anamuan for her critical eyes. ♥
Before, when you considered the apocalypse, you never imagined you would survive. Didn't think you should, considering what you've done.
Later you realized that probably neither of you would. Twisted as it was, that would have been okay with you, too.
This? What you have now? It's not okay. You're not okay and you don't know what this is. You don't even know where this is, this fucked up reality that's left you motherless, and fatherless, and now both brothers down. You don't know how to be this, the last Winchester. The sole survivor of the epic showdown.
The only thing you know is that Sam is gone and you are still alive and it hurts beyond the bearing.
*
When she asks, you return to this moment and this place, you clear your throat and you tell her you're good. It's not even a hopeful statement, that lie. It's just something you have to say, to swallow down, to take another breath after another gulp of whiskey.
You look across the table at Ben before reaching for the dinner rolls, breaking them apart and sharing them around, and it's hard not to see Sam. Sam in another life, across a rickety, stained kitchen table beneath a bare light bulb, where you divided out cereal and poured milk, and you watched your ten-year-old brother eat with exasperation and frustration and fondness all a confused tangle in your chest.
You blink and Sam is gone and there's only Ben looking back at you before he glances uncertainly at his mother. You try to smile when his smile falters, and you listen as Lisa takes over, their voices intertwining and washing over you. You lean forward and make yourself listen to them, to what they're saying. You're involved. You care. You can't remember how you got here, but now that you're here, in this home, you have to find a way to deserve it.
You're good, you have to be, for them, now, because they're all that's left.
*
You don't know why she took you into her home or why she lets you stay. It's too soon to consider why. You're still a burned man with raw-meat skin and cinders in your lungs. You try not to think about why or you'll hear Sam's words, his last wish, and that'll be it. You won't be able to see or breathe. Not for a while, at least.
Your promise binds you. To this world, to this woman, and to her child. Not just to this life, but to life. You hear Castiel's words. More of the same. Only it isn't, it can never be. More of the same would be a world with Sam in it.
It's true you don't want the fakery of heaven, all those happy moments rewound and replayed, relived for eternity. Peace or freedom, Castiel said, and you know what you would have chosen in defiance a year ago, six months ago, but that was before this, the agony of blinking your eyes and filling your lungs, of nursing this gut-wrenching charred-black emptiness. What you want is neither, neither peace nor freedom. What you want you can never have. Not heaven, not hell, not life, not death.
Well maybe you would take death, if only it meant true oblivion. You don't get that, though. You get this. Lisa and Ben, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood, the kindness of a kind woman and a kid who still thinks you're kind of neat, even if you're kind of broken.
You don't know why she took you in, but you're grateful she did. Maybe she feels safer with you around so you'll give her every ounce of safety you can. She deserves that. Her son deserves that. When she touches you there, on your shoulder, to lead you to the guest room, or when she squeezes your arm in passing, you don't flinch away. You want to because her (any) touch hurts, because you don't feel like you deserve it, but you accept her compassion because you need it.
When she finds you sitting in the dark, shuddering, scrubbing at your face, fingers twitching and throat burning, she comes to you and holds you, and you hold her until you can breathe again.
*
You still can't sleep, and when you do, you fall into uneasy, restless nightmares, broken and strange. Sometimes you see Sam.
Then you think you're hallucinating and it scares the shit out of you, this sense of Sam that creeps up on you at odd moments during the day. It's not the memories - they hurt, and they're constant, no matter what you do, but it's something closer, something near, a presence that makes you wonder if you've finally cracked.
At first you don't know what to do about it. You want to be a better man but you're not sure how. You stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror and you see someone you haven't recognized in a long time, a heartbroken and broken-down man, hollow eyes and hollow cheeks. You are that man and you can barely meet his eyes. You are that wretch of a human being and you are losing your mind.
You think that Sam wouldn't want this for you. Lisa doesn't want this for you.
But you. You want to be numb, you crave it, to stay fuzzy and find Sam flickering just beyond the corner of your eye. It's a pain you feel you deserve, the pitchfork striking true, stabbing deep every time.
There is a flask clutched tight in your hand, what gets you through the day. It's a comfort, and it's automatic, the motion that brings it to your lips. This time you frown and you force it down with a slow, shaking hand. You give it a hard look, and yourself another.
You've been fighting forward in one way for so long, it feels like digging out of your own grave to imagine anything different.
Not for yourself. For them. You decide that Lisa and Ben deserve better.
So you cut back on the drink and when you do it's like emerging from a half-waking nightmare to something worse. Everything hurts more, is sharper, cuts deeper, but things become clearer, too. Less confused.
And when you see how Lisa's eyes relax, as though she's let out a breath you didn't realize she was holding, you decide it might be worth it.
*
Not even in your worst moments do you wish you could have traded places with your brother. Not Sam's death, not even Sam's eternal imprisonment and eternal torture, make you wish that you could be there with him, in that cage, in Hell. You hate yourself for it, but not even for Sam - you can't make yourself wish to ever go back.
You try hard not to think about Sam in Hell; imagining that - knowing what he must suffer - it's worse than this half-life without him.
*
You don't let yourself relax. You can't. This isn't the easy choice, the idyllic life. This is the hard choice, keeping your promise, and it's at least as hard as anything you've done before. Harder, but it's best not to consider it.
There is no longer an endless road before you, America blurring past the Impala's windows. No limitless possibilities that extend to the horizon, no wind in your hair, or Sam in the seat beside you. There are also no crappy motels, no dubious diner breakfasts, no waking up in the car on the side of a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, hungry and tired and cold.
These days, there's Lisa and Ben with coffee and orange juice in morning. Dinner in the evening. Looking after the kid. Cleaning the gutters. Laundry and grocery shopping and a million other stupid things to do around the house, things you haven't done in a long time, not since you were a kid and looking after Sammy during Dad's long stretches away. It wasn't easy then and it sure isn't easy now.
There is no hunting. And, right now, there is no one to save here in Indiana, except maybe yourself.
No exorcisms, no salt-and-burns. There are new routines to learn, new rituals.
So you rise early most days and run. In the beginning it hurts as much as everything else - this time alone with yourself when the self-loathing and guilt and grief and regret coalesce into an anguished refrain. It breaks you down a little more every day. You taste salt as you race through the dawn and you don't pretend that it's only sweat.
*
It takes some doing, but eventually you find work - not steady work: you're still officially dead, so for a while anyway, you want to lay low, keep your head down. But it's absorbing, honest labor as you lay sod and trim hedges, plant flower beds and ride huge lawnmowers over wide green lawns. You learn to speak some Spanish, you make nice with the crew, and you are quietly paid. It's demanding physical work that leaves you exhausted, but it's good. You're good. You won't be a deadbeat taking advantage of Lisa's kindness, no matter how many times she tells you to go easy on yourself, no matter how often she says it's okay, Dean, rest a while. There is no rest for you. There is only more of the same.
*
You don't fix the Impala. You can't, not yet. You leave her as she is, with her spiderwebbed glass and the little dents Lucifer used you to put in her skin.
Def Leppard stays in the cassette deck, a memorial to your last stand.
You don't touch Sam's things.
Lisa offers you the garage, and once you've organized it just so, there's plenty of room. You climb inside your baby, turn the ignition and roll her in so you can leave her in peace. You've pushed her hard - too hard - these last few years. She's tough, but she deserves a break now.
Sometimes you trail your fingers along her side when you walk past.
Sometimes Ben follows along behind you, doing the same. When you catch his eye, he snatches his hand away guiltily. You swallow and try to smile before you make yourself reach out and ruffle his hair.
*
Sam's sacrifice stopped the apocalypse, but it didn't remove evil from the world. So you can't give up the salt or the holy water or the guns, and when you explain to Lisa, she doesn't ask you to. Can you be discreet? she asks seriously, Can you be careful? and you nod, already considering how. There are probably still demons out there and you don't want your promise to cost any more lives. It's not arrogant to think you could be putting them in danger, that no one will come gunning for you. Too many things out there know who you are.
It becomes a personal challenge to ward Lisa's nice suburban house without leaving too-obvious traces. Wouldn't want the neighbors to talk, after all. Then, one day Lisa surprises you by asking questions. What's that for? How does that work? You want to resist when she suggests that Ben help you. You think of Sam's lost innocence, of your own, but your knee-jerk protest dies at her look. Ben's innocence was lost two years ago and the world got a lot scarier in the meantime. You hate it, but it's probably for the best.
*
In the summer there's baseball and barbecues and you go swimming with Ben and Lisa. Summer gives way to autumn and there is football and Ben's soccer games and you breathe through it all. You're clearer now.
See, Sammy?
Sometimes you think you have to live this life twice as hard, to experience everything twice as much, to milk it dry. You need to live this life for Sam, and Adam, too, for the lives they gave up. For what they missed out on, and what they lost.
So you try to do for Ben all the things John Winchester never did for you and you bite your tongue when you sometimes hear his sharp words in your head. You won't be that. You'll be different because you can. You have that choice.
You care for them, for this boy and for his mother. Once you fantasized something like happiness with them, sunshine and picnics, and they deserve that. You can't give them everything you want to, but you can give them what you have, what you have left. Maybe it isn't much, but you keep trying.
*
November approaches. You want to, almost more than you can stand, but you don't run away. You don't disappear back into the bottle.
It comes and it goes. Regret is a twisting knife in your gut, fury its sharper twin. There are bad days, black days that leave your lungs scorched and your heart aching. You battle them down until you are limp and exhausted.
Lisa is gentle and patient and she listens when you begin to tell the story, your story, Sam's story. You can't tell her everything, not yet. But you begin.
*
And you give thanks for Lisa every day. For taking you in, for letting you into her family, and for staying beside you. For getting angry at you, for forgiving you when you fuck up, and helping you to do better. For teaching you how to live in her world and look after her son.
You will never know why she does it. After a while you stop trying to understand. You don't know if you love her, and you don't know if she loves you. All you know is that something has been growing between you, something strong that is beyond gratitude and fear and loneliness, something deep that connects you. Maybe it won't last, maybe it will. You know that she's made a choice, just as you have, to make whatever this is work.
*
It feels like forever, but more of the same gradually begins to look different.
One day you discover yourself laughing without conscious effort while Ben tells stories from a class trip. Ben, in his animation, doesn't seem to notice, but Lisa does and you feel something in you thaw under the wondering joy in her eyes.
One day you learn to quiet your mind during your morning run, and you let your footfalls on the pavement replace the black refrain with a steady new drumbeat. Your feet are light and your heart is lighter when you return.
Orange juice? Lisa asks when you open the door and step in, and Ben bounds into the kitchen yelling Pancakes! Yeah!
Your mind stays quiet as you watch them. You lean back against the kitchen counter and you breathe.
*
It's more than a year before you can bring yourself to do it. You've waited, and you keep waiting, white-knuckling it past the black hole of despair called May. One year since Sam fell into that hole and took Adam and Lucifer and Michael with him. One year and you are still alive, and so are Lisa and Ben, and you can hardly believe it.
It’s hard, getting through May, as hard as you feared it would be, and Lisa listens a lot more. There are more black days, days that leave you wanting to end it all, when you are so choked by what you've lost that you can't see what's been holding you together.
Somehow you make it to June. And then it's July, and Ben's out of school again, and Lisa says one night with a glance toward the garage, Dean. Maybe it's time.
That's all she says, but it stays with you, quiet encouragement that has you digging out the Impala's keys from a sock in the back of a drawer.
*
It's not easy, more than a year later, to handle the remnants of that life. You take Sam's bags up to your room and close the door and keep this moment only for yourself.
You slowly unpack your brother's belongings into neat piles on the floor. You finger the holes at the bottom of Sam's worn t-shirts, the frayed edges of his old jeans and you smooth his crumpled suit and wadded-up ties. You breathe in the musty smell of unwashed clothes and the Impala's trunk. You catch a faint whiff of Sam somewhere in there and it's familiar and awful and you wish that scent would never die.
It hurts, of course it hurts.
You find crude folds of torn notebook paper tucked into the laptop case, one small, well-folded rectangle that feels slightly heavy, and another larger one, thin and flat, both with your name scrawled over in large letters.
You think of the letter you wrote for Sam in that hotel room before he found you. The larger paper opens in thirds. The message is short, scribbled, barely legible - but it's Sam. You make yourself focus and you read.
Dean,
You know everything, so I won't embarrass you by writing it here. No time for a long letter anyway.
I'll just say thanks. For everything. I mean that. Thank you.
Find someone to love, and find someone who loves you.
You're a good man, the best I know, and I want you to be happy.
That's it. Take care of yourself.
Your brother,
Sam
You stare at the words until they blur and disappear, and you stay there for a long time, holding the hastily scrawled note in your hand, wondering when Sam wrote it, and realizing it doesn't matter. Sam's words swirl in your head, what he wrote, and what he said to you in the car before Detroit. What he made you promise.
It's your job, your responsibility to care for them, for Lisa and Ben, to do right by them, and to honor Sam with your effort. You know now it was never supposed to be a burden. He didn't want you to enslave yourself to an impossible ideal, that idea of the apple pie life you once scoffed at to hide your own longing. He wanted you to have something normal, something clean and good that wasn't twisted and ruined like virtually everything you'd had before.
Maybe you do. Maybe Sam knew it wasn't too late for you, that you weren't too damaged the way you thought you were when you came out of Hell. Maybe you aren't beyond hope. Maybe.
Finally there is a knock at the door and you hear Lisa's voice: Dean?
Yeah, you say, clearing your throat and wiping your face. She opens the door and when she gazes at you her eyes are soft.
Are you okay?
You look down as she comes into the room and closes the door behind her. There is still the other lumpy little packet of paper, heavier in your hand than it should be. You realize what it is just before you pull it open and see the black cord nested around your amulet. You have no tears left as you look at it in your palm, a comforting weight that's been missing for too long. Maybe you weren't strong enough to bear it before, but now - now - maybe you finally are.
You settle it around your neck, feel it against your chest, and you give Lisa a sideways glance, a tiny crooked smile.
Yeah, you say as she settles on the floor beside you, when her arms slip around you. Yeah, you say, I'm good.
--
So maybe you aren't there yet, but that's okay. Even imagining happiness is still just out of reach. You don't know if you will get there, but you're clearer now, clearer than before. For now, you're good, and maybe someday you will.
FIN
--
Title and cut text from "Promise What You Will" by Iron & Wine.
I wrote this fic over two days (17 May-18 May) and it's fairly different from my usual. Like many people, I was deeply affected by the S5 finale and writing was my therapy. ;) Obviously I've let alone Sam's appearance at the end of the episode, mostly because I needed to see how Dean could do it - leave hunting and live a more settled life - without Sam - for some length of time. There's so much more I could have written, but I ended it here because I had to - I didn't want this story in my head for too long. /self-indulgent blather