"Before Our Hells (There Was This)"
Title: Before Our Hells (There Was This)
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: Yenneffer
Type: one-shot,
Timeframe: season 4
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, mention of: John
Genres: General, Family Drama (isn’t it always with those two?)
Warnings: Sadly, my Dean is very g-rated. Not even one f-word! Sure sign of impending Apocalypse (oh, wait, it is a Season 4 fic); Family Dysfunction; type Dean-Will-Love-Sam-To-Death-(Preferably-Not-Sam’s-If-Only-The-Bitch-Stopped-Interfering) mental condition; post-hell trauma
Summary: This is the reason: Sam was the only constant, a high and an aim in this Winchester-functional home you had (used to have).
Disclaimer: Love ‘em too much to own ‘em. All hail Kripke! :)
Before Our Hells (There Was This)
The reason it - you - is as it is is that your whole life (growing up like you did, you know?) you were entangled together:
Sam was the only constant, a high and an aim in this Winchester-functional home you had (used to have).
You don’t blame anyone for this, hell (the force with which the word wrenches itself from your throat, against your will, says, “but you do”), this is just how your life turned out to be. Nothing else to say.
This is the real thing, and you have proved to yourself - once, remember that bittersweet unreality? - that you wouldn’t have it any other way.
[after all, you were the only one that needed
convincing
You say a lot - and often - about family, but what is it that you really know about love? The one you speak of is the one without words (there aren’t any), a tough little thing that constricts under the weight of two (sometimes, when you wake, you know there is too little space for the both of you, that one of you should leave. This is when you wish you could wake up again just to tell yourself - another lie, what’s the difference? - it was only a dream).
Yet Sam remains everything that is worth something in your life, so you hold on to him. You’re both the very definitions of words. Sam is everything. You are the one holding on.
(You carefully don’t say you are unworthy of him
-it’s not like he or you don’t know that)
It’s selfish, probably, but so is he; you both learn from one another, morphing harder into the dysfunctional family you have always been, sigils left by cold ashes that burnt deeper than skin, into the bones, sinews and blood−
[whatever the latter may mean these days
As far as selfishness go, you will always strive to outdo the other.
(how many levels down are there?)
This is how you speak: firm fists and desperate, unyielding words that hurt even more (but who?), this is a language that you use to protect him; it’s the tough love, the one that lashes out, something no woman nor man who was not a Winchester could possibly understand.
The origins of this language are your history, full of stale and stifling walls in motel rooms, purifying lines of salt and the well-known shotgun handles placed into the hands of a boy who knew too much by the always-disappearing figure of a father.
You don’t go around blaming anyone for how your life turned out; no need for normal now when there was never any around.
It is just what it is.
The End