Supernatural Fic: Never To Be Told...
There is a good chance that this will come out as soup, as I have not updated my journal since the new update page arrived. Wish me luck.
I've not been this nervous about posting a piece of fic for quite frankly, years, which makes me both old and a little pathetic.
Title: Never to be Told; Or, Five secrets Dean Winchester keeps from his little brother (and one secret Sam keeps from him)
Fandom: Supernatural.
Rating / Genre: PG-13, Gen
Words: 2068
Spoilers: Post Simon Said, 2.05. References to the secret, but without any indication of what it may be. Mostly because I have absolutely no idea what it is.
Disclaimer/ Notes: Supernatural is the property of The CW. Possibly Eric Kripke. For all of my flist who got me into this fandom, but especially for miss_begonia, who is making a much better job of getting out there than I am.
Summmary: Even if you know the right words to use, some things are better left unsaid.
The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star is Brotherhood.
- Edwin Markin, Brotherhood
The silence is making Dean's brain ache, but the last thing he wants to hear right now is the angry sounds of the Motorhead tape stuck in the cassette player, so he weathers it.
Sam was dead to the world before they crossed out of Nebraska; the physical toll of three visions in two days not helped any by being walloped round the head with a tree branch. What Sam doesn't know as the tires wear ever thinner on the seemingly endless miles of road to Wisconsin is that there is so much more to follow.
Even two months from now, after Dean repeats their father's confession and Sam's understanding flipsides, when he manages to stop shaking long enough for, "Is that everything?", he won't know that Dean is mentally adding, "For now."
They pass the turn off for Estherville and a part of Dean wants to park the Impala crossways in the centre of the road and wait for the next truck as he realises that he's more than eighty miles further away from a bed for the night, or in this case, day, than he thought.
Miles to go, promises to keep. And secrets. Always secrets.
~
Fire that's closest kept burns most of all
- William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
It didn't make sense to him at the time, but the night Jess died Dean had the strongest feeling that Sam wasn't telling him something. Sam had kept things from him before- a bad scratch to the Impala in Ruby Hill, Nevada and a bad concussion in Allentown, Pennsylvania sprung instantly to mind- but this was different. Something had gotten Sam scared and not knowing what it was made Dean's skin itch. Now, of course he knows that what Sam was keeping to himself was the fact that he'd been watching his girlfriend burn for days before she ended up bleeding and charred on the ceiling.
Dean doesn't think it would help his already guilt-ridden brother to know that whenever Sam fell asleep during that first weekend, that the room felt hotter, that he could smell ashes and smoke and what didn't make sense then, sure as hell does now.
Dean doesn't think it would help his kid brother to know that when his indestructibly reliable watch stopped dead two minutes after he drove the Impala away from the apartment, he just knew he was driving back to drag Sam- and only Sam- from an inferno.
Most of all, Dean doesn't think it would help Sam to know that sometimes it's not just Sam's visions that scare the hell out of him, it's Sam himself.
~
The hymn of the low and the humble, the weary and the broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part.
- W.W. Story, Io Victus
There's a file on the computer that Sam doesn't know about.
Dean's buried it deep, hidden six feet under of program files and disk fragments and there's a binary encryption running to make it look like junk in the unlikely event that Sam goes walkabout through the hard drive.
Everything is in there.
Not just the obvious useful stuff; a history of their aliases, I.D. badge templates, names and addresses of other hunters, roadhouses, safe houses and the handful of people he and Sam can call friends.
Everything in this instance means all the things he can't tell Sammy about.
What Dad told him about Sam.
Where Dad went those three weeks before he disappeared from Jericho.
Why Sam can't control his visions, when every other child with psychic abilities marked by the demon can.
The demon's real name.
What Dean found out about Ellen.
Protection spells, some of them for the two of them, some of them just for him.
Dean updates the file when he can, usually when Sam's asleep, or out for groceries and the betrayal always snare-twists his insides over. He knows sooner or later he's going to have to tell Sam about it, but he really doesn't want to, not yet. Not until he has to. Soon, the star charts, key lines and portents tell him they're going to be fighting for survival in a way that's going to make Salvation look like a goddamn teddy bears' picnic and it's all going to come out anyway. Dean's knows he's not going to be able to protect Sam from that, that if anything it's going to be Dean that needs protecting.
Until then he'll do what he can. Keep updating the file. Keep telling himself he's doing the right thing. Keep kidding himself that maybe they'll win this battle. Keep hoping that when they come to fight it, they'll be on the same side.
~
There is no armour from fate;
Death lies his icy hands on kings.
- J. Shirley, Dirge: Death the Leveller.
Sammy's probably worked out by now that when Dean told him he and Dad used to swing by campus time to time, make sure he was still breathing and breathing free air, it was the tip of the iceberg. Truth was; they barely left California the whole time Sam was at Stanford. Sometimes, if the hunt looked like your standard season and spark, one of them might go as far out as the edges of Mountain / Central, but the other would always stay within a day's drive of Palo Alto.
Before he and Sammy scourged a water wraith out of a strip of beach houses calling itself a town in the Outer Banks last spring, Dean hadn't seen the Atlantic Ocean in nearly two years. He'd forgotten how beautiful it was watching the sun pull out of the water, bringing colour back to his grey world onshore. Of course he'd probably have appreciated it more if he wasn't lying face down in his own puke, a nice side effect of nearly been drowned, but hey, you went where the job took you. He was going to be washing sand out of his butt for days.
Still, it was worth it. The sun was peaceful and warm on his back and Sam was safe. That's what the hunt came down to, in the end. Riding the roads. Staying in California. They'd had to keep Sammy safe.
Fuck load of good it did them.
~
Homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanting food.
- Wordsworth, Guilt and Sorrow
There's another file too, this one left in the hands of others. Five safety deposit boxes in five different states. Their contents almost identical, Dean has entrusted the keys to four people he knows will understand.
Bobby, Missouri, Cassie and now that Caleb and Pastor Jim are gone, Andy Gallagher. It surprised him too, but Dean didn't have anyone else. He doesn't know if that makes him feel sadder or safer.
The fifth key he slipped on to the Impala keyring, two weeks after Dad went missing. Sam hasn't noticed yet. Dean hopes he never will; he doesn't want to answer those questions until they're done hunting and they never were any good at lying to each other. Never used to be, anyway. Lately, it seems to be all they do.
Inside, there's a new life for each of them. Passports, birth certificates, bank accounts, credit cards, social security numbers, the works. Dean thinks Canada would be a good place to start. There's plenty of space up there. They could find somewhere to stop, find somewhere to call home that didn't have wheels.
It's always the two of them he imagines, always was. Somehow, a part of him always understood that they'd be the ones to finish what their dad couldn't.
Starting over. That'd be something.
Dean figures there's room for monsters, ghosts, demons and reapers in this world, there's got to be room for hope too.
~
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
The secret that's hardest to keep is the one he inherited from his father.
Dean's come to redefine the term psychic in the last year he's spent on the road with Sam, and in any case he'd never have claimed that label for himself, but he's always been good at reading people. Getting them to volunteer information they wouldn't share with family, most times without batting an eyelid, knowing when someone was hiding something. Guessing when they were going to call him back to the doorstep, tell him one last detail, usually a weird one and the missing piece of the puzzle he was rooting through the jigsaw box for in the first place. Knowing when a confession was coming.
His dad looked like that, after he clawed his way back from the accident to consciousness. And even though it wasn't something they did, wasn't the way they talked to one another, Dean had known in the twist of his gut that his dad had a confession to make, a big one and it terrified him. So even though he shouldn't get terrified and even though it wasn't their way, Dean'd asked him, "What is it?"
And after five minutes of trying to find the right words, a way of apologising for the past and priming the path ahead, his dad finally settled on this-
I want you to watch out for Sammy, okay?
Not-
I need you to look after your brother.
Or-
Take care of Sammy, Dean.
Not a request. A warning.
~
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
- Byron, Darkness
In Carrie, King called it a flex.
Sam called it a punch, but it was unlike any other punch he'd ever thrown. Even now, after 23 years of hunting, he still feels like his real punches are loose, powered by arms that he hasn't grown into yet. When the cabinet moved, it was different. Energy focused, no desperation, just a short pure burst of adrenaline, laced with furious anger the like of which he couldn't remember ever feeling before. Tidy, neat. Not what Sam would consider his speciality.
Sam knew even as he told Dean about it that punch was the wrong word, but apparently an insatiable reading habit, the best part of a good college education and more than a passing acquaintance with Latin weren't enough to furnish him with a better one. So punch it was. At least for now. Because how else could else could Sam explain what something like that felt like?
It was…
… standing alone on the edge of high open cliff and being suddenly aware of how close your own death could be… like the in between spaces before and after his visions, when the pain was so sharp he thought he could actually hear his mind screaming… like waiting on the platform as a subway train comes rattling out of the tunnel and that heart flutter moment when you find yourself thinking about stepping out… like a dream, one of those really fantastic ones when you're totally in control, but you still get the feeling something else, something ancient, is watching you…
But there was something else as well, more than just a weird-as-bullshit feeling. That burst of power left a taste in his mouth, almost but not quite like sulphur, though it made him want to breathe deep and fast in the same way to be rid of it.
It didn't belong to him.
Make the gun float to you there, Psychic Boy.
Thing is, Sam thinks he could have done it, done it easy. But it felt wrong, more dangerous even than letting the demon walk away with the colt, so he locked the impulse away.
More and more lately, he finds himself thinking about it. Staring at random objects- a salt shaker, a shotgun out of reach, the motel drawers that Dean is always leaving open and Sam's forever bumping into- and thinking, Yeah. I could do it. Simple. Flex.
He hasn't yet. Can't seem to shake that not-right feeling.
But Sam sees he's beginning to scare Dean more anyway. His dad is still dead. And the question of whether it's right or wrong seems to matter less and less.
~
I've not been this nervous about posting a piece of fic for quite frankly, years, which makes me both old and a little pathetic.
Title: Never to be Told; Or, Five secrets Dean Winchester keeps from his little brother (and one secret Sam keeps from him)
Fandom: Supernatural.
Rating / Genre: PG-13, Gen
Words: 2068
Spoilers: Post Simon Said, 2.05. References to the secret, but without any indication of what it may be. Mostly because I have absolutely no idea what it is.
Disclaimer/ Notes: Supernatural is the property of The CW. Possibly Eric Kripke. For all of my flist who got me into this fandom, but especially for miss_begonia, who is making a much better job of getting out there than I am.
Summmary: Even if you know the right words to use, some things are better left unsaid.
The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star is Brotherhood.
- Edwin Markin, Brotherhood
The silence is making Dean's brain ache, but the last thing he wants to hear right now is the angry sounds of the Motorhead tape stuck in the cassette player, so he weathers it.
Sam was dead to the world before they crossed out of Nebraska; the physical toll of three visions in two days not helped any by being walloped round the head with a tree branch. What Sam doesn't know as the tires wear ever thinner on the seemingly endless miles of road to Wisconsin is that there is so much more to follow.
Even two months from now, after Dean repeats their father's confession and Sam's understanding flipsides, when he manages to stop shaking long enough for, "Is that everything?", he won't know that Dean is mentally adding, "For now."
They pass the turn off for Estherville and a part of Dean wants to park the Impala crossways in the centre of the road and wait for the next truck as he realises that he's more than eighty miles further away from a bed for the night, or in this case, day, than he thought.
Miles to go, promises to keep. And secrets. Always secrets.
~
Fire that's closest kept burns most of all
- William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
It didn't make sense to him at the time, but the night Jess died Dean had the strongest feeling that Sam wasn't telling him something. Sam had kept things from him before- a bad scratch to the Impala in Ruby Hill, Nevada and a bad concussion in Allentown, Pennsylvania sprung instantly to mind- but this was different. Something had gotten Sam scared and not knowing what it was made Dean's skin itch. Now, of course he knows that what Sam was keeping to himself was the fact that he'd been watching his girlfriend burn for days before she ended up bleeding and charred on the ceiling.
Dean doesn't think it would help his already guilt-ridden brother to know that whenever Sam fell asleep during that first weekend, that the room felt hotter, that he could smell ashes and smoke and what didn't make sense then, sure as hell does now.
Dean doesn't think it would help his kid brother to know that when his indestructibly reliable watch stopped dead two minutes after he drove the Impala away from the apartment, he just knew he was driving back to drag Sam- and only Sam- from an inferno.
Most of all, Dean doesn't think it would help Sam to know that sometimes it's not just Sam's visions that scare the hell out of him, it's Sam himself.
~
The hymn of the low and the humble, the weary and the broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part.
- W.W. Story, Io Victus
There's a file on the computer that Sam doesn't know about.
Dean's buried it deep, hidden six feet under of program files and disk fragments and there's a binary encryption running to make it look like junk in the unlikely event that Sam goes walkabout through the hard drive.
Everything is in there.
Not just the obvious useful stuff; a history of their aliases, I.D. badge templates, names and addresses of other hunters, roadhouses, safe houses and the handful of people he and Sam can call friends.
Everything in this instance means all the things he can't tell Sammy about.
What Dad told him about Sam.
Where Dad went those three weeks before he disappeared from Jericho.
Why Sam can't control his visions, when every other child with psychic abilities marked by the demon can.
The demon's real name.
What Dean found out about Ellen.
Protection spells, some of them for the two of them, some of them just for him.
Dean updates the file when he can, usually when Sam's asleep, or out for groceries and the betrayal always snare-twists his insides over. He knows sooner or later he's going to have to tell Sam about it, but he really doesn't want to, not yet. Not until he has to. Soon, the star charts, key lines and portents tell him they're going to be fighting for survival in a way that's going to make Salvation look like a goddamn teddy bears' picnic and it's all going to come out anyway. Dean's knows he's not going to be able to protect Sam from that, that if anything it's going to be Dean that needs protecting.
Until then he'll do what he can. Keep updating the file. Keep telling himself he's doing the right thing. Keep kidding himself that maybe they'll win this battle. Keep hoping that when they come to fight it, they'll be on the same side.
~
There is no armour from fate;
Death lies his icy hands on kings.
- J. Shirley, Dirge: Death the Leveller.
Sammy's probably worked out by now that when Dean told him he and Dad used to swing by campus time to time, make sure he was still breathing and breathing free air, it was the tip of the iceberg. Truth was; they barely left California the whole time Sam was at Stanford. Sometimes, if the hunt looked like your standard season and spark, one of them might go as far out as the edges of Mountain / Central, but the other would always stay within a day's drive of Palo Alto.
Before he and Sammy scourged a water wraith out of a strip of beach houses calling itself a town in the Outer Banks last spring, Dean hadn't seen the Atlantic Ocean in nearly two years. He'd forgotten how beautiful it was watching the sun pull out of the water, bringing colour back to his grey world onshore. Of course he'd probably have appreciated it more if he wasn't lying face down in his own puke, a nice side effect of nearly been drowned, but hey, you went where the job took you. He was going to be washing sand out of his butt for days.
Still, it was worth it. The sun was peaceful and warm on his back and Sam was safe. That's what the hunt came down to, in the end. Riding the roads. Staying in California. They'd had to keep Sammy safe.
Fuck load of good it did them.
~
Homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanting food.
- Wordsworth, Guilt and Sorrow
There's another file too, this one left in the hands of others. Five safety deposit boxes in five different states. Their contents almost identical, Dean has entrusted the keys to four people he knows will understand.
Bobby, Missouri, Cassie and now that Caleb and Pastor Jim are gone, Andy Gallagher. It surprised him too, but Dean didn't have anyone else. He doesn't know if that makes him feel sadder or safer.
The fifth key he slipped on to the Impala keyring, two weeks after Dad went missing. Sam hasn't noticed yet. Dean hopes he never will; he doesn't want to answer those questions until they're done hunting and they never were any good at lying to each other. Never used to be, anyway. Lately, it seems to be all they do.
Inside, there's a new life for each of them. Passports, birth certificates, bank accounts, credit cards, social security numbers, the works. Dean thinks Canada would be a good place to start. There's plenty of space up there. They could find somewhere to stop, find somewhere to call home that didn't have wheels.
It's always the two of them he imagines, always was. Somehow, a part of him always understood that they'd be the ones to finish what their dad couldn't.
Starting over. That'd be something.
Dean figures there's room for monsters, ghosts, demons and reapers in this world, there's got to be room for hope too.
~
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
The secret that's hardest to keep is the one he inherited from his father.
Dean's come to redefine the term psychic in the last year he's spent on the road with Sam, and in any case he'd never have claimed that label for himself, but he's always been good at reading people. Getting them to volunteer information they wouldn't share with family, most times without batting an eyelid, knowing when someone was hiding something. Guessing when they were going to call him back to the doorstep, tell him one last detail, usually a weird one and the missing piece of the puzzle he was rooting through the jigsaw box for in the first place. Knowing when a confession was coming.
His dad looked like that, after he clawed his way back from the accident to consciousness. And even though it wasn't something they did, wasn't the way they talked to one another, Dean had known in the twist of his gut that his dad had a confession to make, a big one and it terrified him. So even though he shouldn't get terrified and even though it wasn't their way, Dean'd asked him, "What is it?"
And after five minutes of trying to find the right words, a way of apologising for the past and priming the path ahead, his dad finally settled on this-
I want you to watch out for Sammy, okay?
Not-
I need you to look after your brother.
Or-
Take care of Sammy, Dean.
Not a request. A warning.
~
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
- Byron, Darkness
In Carrie, King called it a flex.
Sam called it a punch, but it was unlike any other punch he'd ever thrown. Even now, after 23 years of hunting, he still feels like his real punches are loose, powered by arms that he hasn't grown into yet. When the cabinet moved, it was different. Energy focused, no desperation, just a short pure burst of adrenaline, laced with furious anger the like of which he couldn't remember ever feeling before. Tidy, neat. Not what Sam would consider his speciality.
Sam knew even as he told Dean about it that punch was the wrong word, but apparently an insatiable reading habit, the best part of a good college education and more than a passing acquaintance with Latin weren't enough to furnish him with a better one. So punch it was. At least for now. Because how else could else could Sam explain what something like that felt like?
It was…
… standing alone on the edge of high open cliff and being suddenly aware of how close your own death could be… like the in between spaces before and after his visions, when the pain was so sharp he thought he could actually hear his mind screaming… like waiting on the platform as a subway train comes rattling out of the tunnel and that heart flutter moment when you find yourself thinking about stepping out… like a dream, one of those really fantastic ones when you're totally in control, but you still get the feeling something else, something ancient, is watching you…
But there was something else as well, more than just a weird-as-bullshit feeling. That burst of power left a taste in his mouth, almost but not quite like sulphur, though it made him want to breathe deep and fast in the same way to be rid of it.
It didn't belong to him.
Make the gun float to you there, Psychic Boy.
Thing is, Sam thinks he could have done it, done it easy. But it felt wrong, more dangerous even than letting the demon walk away with the colt, so he locked the impulse away.
More and more lately, he finds himself thinking about it. Staring at random objects- a salt shaker, a shotgun out of reach, the motel drawers that Dean is always leaving open and Sam's forever bumping into- and thinking, Yeah. I could do it. Simple. Flex.
He hasn't yet. Can't seem to shake that not-right feeling.
But Sam sees he's beginning to scare Dean more anyway. His dad is still dead. And the question of whether it's right or wrong seems to matter less and less.
~