Final gift for elohvee
My apologies for being incredibly, inexcusably late. My only excuse is that I'm new at this. The training wheels on my tricycle are showing.
Title: The Fall and Rise
Rating/Pairing: R, Dean/Sam.
Warnings: Reference to underage/adult sex. General spoilers for Season Three.
Prompt: Apocalypse fic.
Summary: After the war, Dean and Sam survive.
The Fall and Rise
The demons sent their virus first. Unleashed it and then watched, amused, as it did its work. The humans tore into each other, infected each other, and then murdered their own species in droves.
They followed that with pestilence. Typhoid, plague, leprosy. Lethal and virulent. The hospitals filled with the sick and suffering, until there wasn't enough room for them all, and then they died wherever they fell. The streets were soon littered with bodies, bloated, bursting open and rotting in the hot sun.
Then the demons brought fire, lit up the heavens with tongues of flame that seared the air and scorched the earth, boiled the seas.
Millions burned.
Hope fled. Fear and panic reigned. Under blood red skies humans became a refugee population, fleeing before the juggernaut of the demons' wrath, struggling to stay alive.
1.
You and Sam survive.
2.
That's all it is at first. Survival. The world is on fire and filled with chaos, and there are thousands of demons, all gunning for your little brother. You might as well have targets painted your backs. So you run. You hide. During the day you scavenge for enough to feed him and a way to shelter him, watch his back. Nights you lay awake, folded awkwardly in the front seat of the Impala, trying to figure out a way to get you and Sam through this to the other side.
You hunt, but only in self-defense. You kill only the things that try to kill you first. You can't afford to get caught above the radar, not anymore, not yet. Not until you're stronger, not until Sam's stronger. Not until you know what you're going to do, and how.
When the time is right you'll fight them, of course. It's not a question of that-never a question of that. You're a Winchester, and so is Sam, and the sons of John Winchester never knuckle under, never give up, never accept defeat.
You'll fight, when the time is right.
But first-first you need to get stronger. First, you need a plan.Before…
Sam saved you. Sam walked into hell and brought you back out with him, but not before the demons carved their marks into you. On the day that crossroads bitch claimed you the hellhounds tore you apart, teeth digging deep into your flesh, separating your muscles from your bones while you screamed your throat raw, and Sam fought Bobby like a wild thing to try to reach you.
It amused your keepers to leave you that way, arms ripped from your sockets, legs broken and dislocated. You spent seven weeks more under their hands, cut and burnt and used, and you know whatever good looks you had are now gone.
There's scar tissue that runs across your face, temple to nose and down your cheek, and a tear in your lower lip that left it crooked. You have a slight lisp you find hard to control when you're tired. There are scars on your back and your arms, too-from the hounds, from the floggings, the brandings-and on your hands and feet where the flesh was burned away. You have a limp you'll carry to your grave.
When it didn't entertain them to make you watch what they did to you, they blinded you again and again, using knives, or hot pokers, sometimes even what passed for their fingers to gouge your eyes out. In the weeks after Sam brought you out you thought you might never see again. Missouri and Bobby were still alive then, and they cooked up poultice after poultice to draw the poison. You lay there sweating and groaning as the burning toxins poured from your eyes and Sam never moved, sat by your bed for days, holding your hand and talking to you softly.
When the bandages came off your eyes were healed but changed. They're bright silver now, and you have no iris, and they look fucking freaky, like outta some weird sci-fi movie. But it's not just the color that's different. It's like you have this x-ray vision now, kind of, like you can see inside people now, to who they are, not just what they look like, as if their souls are written on their faces. You see emotions like colored halos, fear and pain and anger and suspicion.
It's more than you want to know to be honest, although it comes in handy when you can't avoid the towns, when you need to barter for gas or food. Looking in a mirror still makes you a little queasy, though, seeing those eyes that don't look anything like yours staring back at you from the glass. Those eyes and the scars, constant reminders of what happened. Mostly you avoid it if you can, and you've learned to shave without one. It's some kind of fucked up.
3.
Your face heats up when Sam says your high-tech eyes must not work when it comes to you, because you're still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
But then, Sam's always been kind of a girl.
4.
A few months pass. The demons settle into their victory, start getting complacent, stop caring. Most of what's left of mankind is all too willing to serve in exchange for three squares and an end to the uncertainty, and it makes you kind of sick but you try not to think about it too much, because maybe you can't give a damn about saving people you despise.
Once the hunt for Sammy stops being a twenty-four/seven demon free for all and gets handed off to the Department of Fire and Brimstone, or Demons 'R Us, or whatever the hell rinky-dink bureaucracy is in charge of enemies of the state, you get off the road and find a place to squat in the northern part of what used to be Arizona. There are rumors about harmonic convergences and spiritual energies in the area. You figure most of it was New Age crap to bring in the tourists but Sam says there's some truth to it, some of it anyway, and so you let him take the lead in deciding on a place. You check about a dozen abandoned houses in the hills before Sam nods the minute he steps in the door, and then it's your turn to go to work. You grind up agrimony and deersbane, motherwort and snakeroot, make a paste that you work into the rough surface of the adobe bricks before you paint the walls with protective symbols and drill down into the window frames to pour salt.
Sam works some mojo that he says will harness the energies, keep the demons from getting a lock on the place, like creating a kind of mystical white noise, and you unpack your bedrolls and bags, and for the first time in a long time, you sleep on a bed.
5.
You hear about the other children almost by accident. You're out on a run, gathering food and supplies, and you stop at a diner, just for some coffee to keep you going because it's almost dark and you want to get back to Sam before the day is out. You park on the street and put on your dark glasses to hide your eyes, and when you start across you see it, over in vacant lot across the corner from the diner.
It looks like the remains of a bonfire, almost, like the town came out for a high school homecoming celebration. Except whatever it was is over, and there's just the last of the smoldering ashes and a stink in the air that makes you kind of sick.
You go in and sit at the counter and order, and while you're waiting you ask the waitress what's up with the blaze. She gets a funny look on her face and then it bleeds into ugly, the way it does when your new vision kicks in. You almost ask her to stop, because you know it's going to be bad, but she twists her mouth up like she just swallowed something sour and answers you before you can stop her. Tells you they found one of "those demon children," and last night they had the trial and took care of it.
You don't make the connection at first, and then you do. Your stomach clenches and you can taste bile in the back of your throat and you can't imagine the look on your face when you hiss, "You burned her?" The waitress shrinks back from you, and puts a hand to her throat when you take off your dark glasses to stare at her, disbelieving. A couple of guys down the counter look up and see you, see your eyes, and they start to come off of their stools and that's when you book, because you can't afford the attention, you can't afford anyone taking too much interest. Not when you've still got Sam to protect.
So you push your way out the door and throw yourself into your car and drive, and ten miles outside of town you have to pull over and throw up, just to empty your belly of the acid that's fermenting there.
Sam knows there's something the minute you get back and although you don't really want to tell him you know you have to. You know he'd never forgive you if you didn't.
6.
There are two new generations of the children. Six and fifteen, already coming into their powers.
Sam cries when you tell him about the girl. He crumples in on himself and into your arms, and he shakes with grief until you think his bones might come apart. Then he gets mad. Trembles with rage so strong that it rattles the walls on their foundations.
You need to know more if you're going to do anything about it, but there's no way to get hooked in from where you are so you and Sam make a day trip down to what used to be Phoenix, where Sam taps into a signal and starts googling. By evening he has a handful of similar incidents from all around the country, and a dozen ideas about what's going on. He can't explain the why though, why these kids are all coming on-line so young, but the best theory he can come up with makes a hell of a lot sense to you: that somehow their powers got triggered by the war, and they all got switched on like sleeper agents. Dozens of kids who got plugged in but never called up, because they weren't needed, because the demons already had their exit visas.
It's clear the demons don't want the children. They've won their war and they don't need them anymore, and so they've left them to the mercy of humans who, terrified of them and their powers, are slaughtering them, burning them or crucifying them in some horrifying repeat of history. The stories Sam reads to you make you sick, and you're not surprised when Sam gives you that look, that one that says he needs you to be Batman to his Albert Schweitzer. You nod. You're not sure how the two of you will make it work but there's no question that you'll try. It's not the first time you've carried someone out of a fire.
Sam makes a list, names and hometowns, and you spend the next seven weeks on the road, finding and collecting them, and bringing them back to Sam to teach, to guide, to protect. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. It pisses you off when their parents are only too eager to turn them over to you, a virtual stranger, because they're afraid of what their children are and what they might become. Family should mean more than that, you think. Still, you can't deny it makes the job simpler that way.
Some of the children, especially the older ones, have already run away from their families and are living by their wits, turning feral on streets. They're harder to find and harder to convince that you have anything to offer them, and you manage to save only half maybe, maybe even only a third of those.
Sometimes you find a family that, no matter how strong the fear in their eyes when you explain what's going down with their kid, refuse to give their son or daughter away to you like so much damaged property. In those cases, you pack up the whole family, bring them all back with you, figuring it's the only way to save them.
Even the ones that come with you are still frightened and resentful, especially the kids. Wary. They take to Sam a little better, but then Sam's always had that aw, shucks puppy dog thing going for him, even if he is ten feet tall, and anyway, they're a little in awe of the tricks he does to show them they can learn to control these powers they suddenly have. Still, the following weeks are a tough time. The nights are filled by the children's nightmares, their visions, and the days are riddled with chaos as their gifts flare up without control.
Sam's a natural teacher though, and soon everyone can speak Latin as well as English. He teaches them to chant an exorcism rites, and holds contests to see who can draw a Devil's Trap from memory.
7.
After a few months the house in the desert hills isn't big enough anymore. You've got four six year olds, seven fifteen year olds, and three families under your roof-and still more to track down-and even if the house wasn't too small there's the danger that so many people will draw too much attention.
So you start scouting for a new place. Demons hate the heat-reminds them too much of home sweet home, you figure-so you keep to the south, to the deserts. Nothing fits exactly right but when you find an old government research facility just south of Death Valley, with it's own well and a generator you know you can coax back to life, you call it good enough.
You pack up Sam's tribe and move everyone west.
8.
It's easier than you think to keep plugged into what's happening. The complex is filled with computers, sophisticated stuff that puts a gleam in the eyes of the geekier kids, and as soon as you get the generator up and running they take over, cannibalizing the machines and cobbling together a super system that reminds you of Ash's laptop, back in that other lifetime.
You find that demons have taken to the Internet like ducks to water. Sinners to damnation. Whatever. Next thing you know the whole freaking world's a hot zone, no pun intended, so you rig up something that pulls in a wireless signal from Demon Central and Edie, one of the geek squad, sets up an IP that's hidden behind a dozen aliases, and writes a program that changes them out every other day or so.
The demons are arrogant and disorganized-not that this is news-and soon the Web is teeming with information stored on marginally protected vanity sites and My Space accounts. Edie recruits Angel and Sal, two of the smarter kids, and they start monitoring for the keywords Sam gives them. Pretty soon there aren't a whole hell of a lot of passwords they can't break between the three of them.
You've still got the library, too, because some of what you need will always be buried in the dry, brittle pages of antiquity. Sam's put together one of the biggest left in the States, although you've heard that the one in Wales rivals it for some of the ancient texts. Still, wasn't much that Bobby didn't have and after he died trying to take down two of the demons who escaped that night in Wyoming, you traveled across the country to salt and burn his body, and then loaded up everything you could find into two of his vans and towed the Impala behind to get it all back.
9.
Life settles into a routine of sorts. As much as anything can be routine when the world been taken over by soul-sucking demons and you're running from something scarier than the feds could ever be.
There are two priorities-survival first, and then resistance. Survival you're getting down pretty good-there's a roof above everyone's head, the well stays clean, and nobody goes hungry, even if the best you can say about the food sometimes is that it's filling. You're building a decent inventory of medical supplies and almost everyone's gone through your training in field first-aid and can manage a decent suture. The kids get classes in everything from math to machine repair, and you find a job for everyone, from the two nurses to the mechanic, to the seamstress who used to design bridal gowns. Every skill can be translated into something that helps keep you alive.
Resistance is a tougher nut to crack. Sam surprises you-you expect a bigger fight when it comes to training the kids, especially the little ones, but Sam just sets his jaw and says childhood is a luxury that mankind can't afford anymore. So you start them young, as soon as they can reasonably hold a gun, and you train them how to shoot, how to fight, and when to run away, trying to make it a game when you can, just like you used to do for Sam. The older kids get less of the fairy tale and more of the up close and personal-how to dislocate an arm, how to break a neck, what's the quickest way to sever a head.
The switch in Sam's brain keeps flipping and his powers grow and mutate every day. He has visions again, but now he can control them better, and there aren't any more headaches. He can still move objects, and now he's got the Obi-Wan thing that Andy had. He's saved your asses more than once with the whole 'these aren't the 'droids you're looking for' routine.
He can read minds, which pisses the older kids off-he can generally tell when they're gonna pull shit before they've even made the decision to try. He can summon fire and wind from out of thin air and make them do whatever he wants. You watch him stand on the roof and call for thunder and lightening, while the wind whips his hair and carves new valleys out of the sand.
You begin to accept that there may be no limits to what Sam can do, or at least, no limits that matter in the scheme of things. So you take care of the business of staying alive and protecting the people who count on you, while Sam learns to use his new gifts, focus them. You watch him struggle with each new self-revelation, and you know Sam is trying to understand what it all means. Why he was chosen, what his destiny is. You know if the world can be saved, it's Sam who will save it.
And you know if it can't be saved, it is Sam that will doom it once and forever.
10.
There are still hunters out there. You avoid them in the beginning-they were only a step below the demons in their determination to get to Sam, and you'd broken off with all but a handful before the war started. But getting up close and personal with Judgment Day has a tendency to make a man reevaluate, and the bottom line is they know more than anyone else about how to deal with what you're facing.
So you're cautious, but you start seeking them out. Slowly, you track down other resistance cells around the country and the hunters still out there on their own, taking the bad guys down one demon at a time. You hook up-carefully, with caution-and hide your communications inside spam and porn chat sites. Sam smiles and says you enjoy your work too much.
The hunters still don't like Sam-and they really don't like hearing there are more kids like him-but you're past having patience with that shit, and you tell they can either get on board and be part of the solution, or they can keep the fuck away from you and your family. You don't actually say, "try to hurt me and mine and I'll rip your dick off" but you get close enough that the message comes through loud and clear, and one by one they grudgingly agree to a tenuous alliance.
There's no love lost but you're your father's son. You figure out a way to make it work.
11.
It's around this time when Ruby shows up again.
She walks in off the desert, right in the middle of dinner, and thirty pairs of eyes are on you and Sam as she sashays up to your table, bold as brass, demanding a sit down. You roll your eyes and tell the lady to fuck off, wondering how fast you can get to the Colt, but Sam surprises you by nodding his head. Those thirty pairs of eyes narrow as they follow the three of you out of the room.
You're a little surprised when you hear what she has to say. Seems mankind's not alone in this whole good versus evil thing. Turns out there's some jockeying going on for the corner office in Hell, a bit of dissatisfaction with the current management. There are demons on your side, she tells you, although that gets funnier every time you think about it. Or, well-maybe not on your side but against the others, and in this fight the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Something like that.
It's turns into the one thing you and Sammy fight about. You don't trust them, don't trust anything with flat black eyes, but Sam won't be talked out of it, says you need them. He ignores you, agrees to an uneasy coalition, a collaboration of sorts. Shared intelligence, shared strategy. There's a big meeting-demon/human summit so to speak-and Ruby sits on one side of the table, Sam on the other. You sit by Sam's side and glare at her generals, same as they glare back at you, and your eyes don't work on them but you don't need them to. You know what you're dealing with and no matter what Sam says, you still don't like it.
Sam's says you should be grateful-says it was Ruby that helped Sam save you. Says he knows what he's doing, and tells you not to worry.
You glare anyway. Wasn't Ruby walked into Hell, eyes bleeding and hair on fire, soul ripped in two, to save you.
12.
It's the middle of the second year when Sam stops talking. You're not sure why-you're not even sure exactly when it started. Just one day you realized that Sam had been awfully quiet for a few days and when you ask him what's up, he smiles and shrugs and pushes gently into your mind.
It's weird at first, Sam in and out of your head all the time. Takes some getting used to. It's more efficient than talking-no two ways about that. You don't gotta try to figure out what Sam means, you know what Sam means, the minute he slides into your mind. It's like words were the middlemen and without them you get to skip the translation and go right to the source.
It'd be more scary if you thought Sam was rooting around in your head for his own reasons, and in fact, that makes you real uptight in the beginning because yeah, you've been living in each other's pockets for years but you've got a right to your privacy. Didn't take long before you stopped worrying about that though, and now you're pretty sure his ethics are in order on this one. Sam doesn't trespass any more than he has to. He doesn't try to read your mind, just shares his with you.
In some ways, you communicate better than you ever did before, faster, clearer-best signal to noise ratio ever. You feel closer to him than you ever have before. But if you're honest with yourself, you miss Sam's voice. The way he sometimes went on and on about the obscure shit he read, the weird ideas that came into his head. Sometimes you find yourself talking about nothing at all, just to fill the silence.
13.
Turns out you're a little slow on the uptake. It takes the end of the world for you to admit to yourself what you want. What you've always wanted you realize, after the shock wears off, at least someplace deep inside yourself. You realize that's why it hurt so much when he left you and Dad, all those years ago. It's why you hold on so tightly to him now. You love him. You're in love with him.
Jesus. You're in love with Sam.
The thought makes you scared and giddy and a little bit ashamed, and maybe ashamed that you're not more ashamed. He's your little brother, for fuck's sake. It's your job to watch over him, to protect him-not to take advantage of him. You should feel guilty about what you feel, you know that. It's not like you don't know it's wrong.
But it's the most perfect thing in your life, this thing you feel for Sammy. You think maybe it's the least selfish thing you've ever done, loving him. There's nothing you wouldn't do for him, nothing you wouldn't give up for him. Nothing you wouldn't do to see him happy.
Love makes you stupid. Distracted. You go around grinning for days. People look at you like you're six different kinds of weird and the kids take advantage of your sudden good mood to skip out of training with every lame excuse in the world. Word spreads like wildfire around the compound, and you lose spectacularly at cards three nights in a row, because it seems like you suddenly misplaced your poker face.
Sam's confused, you can tell. He looks at you when he thinks you won't notice, with that funny little furrow between his brows he gets when he's trying to solve a puzzle. You've always felt like such an open book with Sam, like you wear heart on your sleeve when it comes to him, with nothing to hide behind, that it surprises you at first that he can't see everything you're feeling, just from looking at your face. You're grateful though, feeling like you do right now, all exposed and vulnerable-you've got some time to catch your breath and figure out what you're going to do.
In the end, though, turns out the feeling inside you is so big there's only so long you can hide it, and really only one way the chips can fall. The day it happens you're in the kitchen, washing dishes, and you start when Sam suddenly wraps himself around you from behind, sliding his hands down your forearms to braid those enormous fingers with yours. He's warm from the sun, and you can smell the fresh sweat dampening his shirt, and when he leans his forehead head against the back of your neck you shiver. This is wrong, you think, but that's an old notion, without any sting left, and you can't stop yourself from leaning back. Sam shifts to take your weight, letting your hips settled in the cradle between his legs and your breath catches in your throat. Your heart's beating wildly and you clutch your fingers around Sam's, enjoying the way they slide together in the warm, slickness of the soap, and then you tilt your head toward him.
"I love you," you whisper. You feel awkward, brave, sick to your stomach. "I love you," you repeat more loudly.
Sam's joy floods your brain, bright and brilliant. You're both trembling, and you close your eyes and whisper, "I want you."
You don't need to see the colors to feel the love.
14.
Your numbers keep growing. More of the children find you-just following the psychic hotline, you tease Sam, and you have to twist out of the way fast when he goes to punch you-and two babies get born. One dies but the other one lives, and her parents name her Hope. Sam cries and doesn't even call you on it when you tease him about being a girl, even though your own eyes are just as wet. Two of the older kids get married, although it's just a made up ceremony, but you've got a priest hanging out with you now so at least it's sort of official, at least in the eyes of someone.
You've got a couple of hunters living at the compound, too, Tim and Denzel, guys who knew your dad and respected him well enough to give his sons the benefit of the doubt. They're not real comfortable around the kids but they don't mess with them, and keep to themselves off in a side wing.
One of the older kids, Stevie, takes to following Denzel around, asking questions all the time. Stevie's one of the first kids you found, a tough little motherfucker living on the streets, turning tricks with humans and demons alike, and he damn near sliced you open throat to groin the first time you tried to get too close. He bucks the rules on a regular basis but he's basically a good kid, even if you have to sit on him a lot.
At some point a couple of the kids go to Sam and tell him Stevie's not sleeping in the dorm anymore, and Sam pulls you aside. He worried and of course you're supposed to do something about it. You're not sure when you got elected Dad but after listening to Sam bitch for three days you have an awkward conversation with Stevie, who basically tells you you're an okay guy but he's been taking care of himself for a while now, so fuck off and mind your own business. You try talking to Denzel, who doesn't say shit, just raises an eyebrow and waits until you turn red and stutter to a halt, and then says pretty much the same thing as Stevie.
You give up. You tell Sam it's none of your damn business, or his, if the kid likes dick-and remind him that he's half of a gay incestuous relationship so, stones and glass houses, Sammy boy-and put it out of your head. It's their choice as far as you can tell and nobody's getting hurt, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say about most things happening in the world today.
15.
The third year is bad.
There's a drought that turns everything from New York to L.A. to dust, chokes the life out of most every living thing. As the supply of food dwindles, some of the survivors take to the roads like packs of wild dogs, fighting over the few bones that are left, while others wrap themselves up in some new kind of fucked up fundamentalism, filled with fear and driven by a twisted, masochistic ecstasy. You're honestly not sure which is scarier, the fucking road warriors or the religious freaks, and both are a threat to Sam and your kids, and so you just keep everyone close, hunker down and learn to make do.
Then the epidemic comes, and that's almost the ballgame. The disease isn't demon bred but it doesn't matter-it kills as effectively as anything the demons could have come up with, just as ruthlessly, and it spreads like wildfire, carried on the wind, so there's no almost no escaping it.
It's an ugly disease. Painful. Marked by high fevers and delirium, the skin turning so tender that the slightest touch causes its victims to curl up in agony. Most die, strangled by their own swollen tongues, black blood pouring from their eyes and mouths.
You're relatively protected out in the desert, but it doesn't stop death from finding its way to your door. Hope is the first to fall prey to it; she's too young, too fragile to fight it, and a dozen more follow her, children and adults.
You don't notice when it gets its claws into you, one of your more stupid mistakes. You tell yourself you're just tired, exhausted with trying to hold things together as panic slowly festers in your little tribe, and it's the desert, so hell, who's not used to feeling too damn hot all the time. Your bones ache but that's not unusual either-there's always more work than muscle.
You're training the older kids, going hand to hand with Rachel, who's going to beat out Sam for the role of Sasquatch if she doesn't quite growing, when you feel the dizziness and the nausea. You shrug it off, step back and drink a cup of water to clear your head but it doesn't help. Rachel's face swims in front of your eyes and everything seems too bright, too loud. You're down on one knee before you can catch yourself, and that's when you get really scared because nothing seems to do what you tell it-you can't stand, can't see, can't make your voice work. You hear Rachel whisper , "Dean," and then one of the other kids, Adam you think, starts yelling for Sam, and you want to say don't bother Sammy, I'm fine, just give me a minute, but you still can't make your mouth work and everything is getting darker and that's the last thing you remember for a long, long time.
16.
Hurts.
Hurts, god, hurts. Hot. You're so fucking hot, you're burning up. Can't breathe past your own tongue, thick in your mouth, and you can taste blood. You're in Hell again-every touch is agony and you shrink back from the hands that refuse to stop reaching for you, tears streaming down the sides of your face because you can't do this again, you just can't, you can't, god, you're ashamed but you're not strong enough.
You open your eyes and Bobby is there. You reach for him, beg him to help you but his eyes turn black so you try to run, try to get away but they're all around you, the demons, and it feels like it did when they'd strip your flesh from your bones, using sharp, thin knives to flay you, peeling away layer after layer to expose raw, bleeding muscle below. God, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. You try to pray-Sammy used to pray, you remember that now-but the words burn your tongue and you choke on them.
You hear Dad's voice but you can't see him. No matter how hard you try, you can't find him in the red fog burning up your brain. You're glad-Dad's not supposed to be here. He's saved now, in Heaven or something-you gotta believe that. Got to believe all those sacrifices for you saved him in the end.
Someone's making you sit up and you whimper and try to pull away. You can't help it-you want to beg them not to touch you, it hurts so much. They're trying to make you drink but you can't bear the weight of the water on your tongue and it dribbles down your chin, and you're still so hot it seems as though the water should burst into steam the minute it touches your skin.
You're dying, you think, and the hardest part is that you're leaving Sam behind.
Dean.
Hands. Hurts, hurts, hurts, and you cry out, try to push them away but these hands won't let go, not even when you scream, dig your nails in and claw. These hands dig in and hold on and pull you close, and there's a moment when the pain is so intense that you think surely this is it, surely you're going to go mad, and then suddenly the fire in your brain goes out, just like that, like a match being blown out, and you collapse in the strong arms wrapped around you, damp and shivering as the fever breaks.
"Sam?"
Not letting you go. Never letting you go.
17.
It takes a while, but you mend. It's slow and frustrating and you spend a lot of the time pissed off about what you can't do. Even after the fever's gone it's weeks before you're strong enough to get out of bed, and still more before you're really back in the game.
You're past the worst of it now though. You buried the last of your dead over six weeks ago, and there haven't been any new outbreaks reported in southern California. Hope's parents announce they're pregnant again-in fact, there are three new babies on the way. Stevie's lost that helpless look he's had ever since Denzel died, and he's taken over training the littlest kids, who follow him around like puppies. The dark circles under Sam's eyes are finally gone and his face no longer looks haunted.
18.
You're on your feet for the first time in weeks, working in the shop when you feel it, that welcome gentle touch in your mind and a rising heat between your legs. Sam's desire and Sam's need. It's been so long and you close your eyes, dizzy with the want.
You make him wait, though. Make both of you wait, force both of you to savor the anticipation. You finish sanding the surface of the new shelf you're building and lay on a coat of primer before you wash your hands and your tools, all the while feeling Sam's fond exasperation and rising impatience. You're finally on your way back to your rooms when Andi stops you at the door with a question about the new security systems. Andi's just turned eighteen and she flirts as naturally as breathing, same as you, and you take the minute to answer her question. You can feel Sam's spike of jealousy and a giddy feeling bubbles up inside of you, and when you grin at Andi she turns bright red, almost down to her toenails.
When you finally get away you find Sam in the bedroom, already naked and standing in front of the window, stroking his dick, the sun cutting a swath of light across his broad shoulders and chest.
"Giving everyone a show?" you ask with a grin, feeling Sam's grouchy annoyance tickling at the edges of your mind, and then Sam's shields fall and you're flooded by it, love and need and desire, hot and searing, and you're lost before you can even think of saving yourself.
You meet each other halfway across the room and your hands are hungry for Sam, running up and down his arms and back and ass. Sam kisses you, mouth open and slick, and you groan, wrap yourself around him and let Sam carry you down to the bed.
Times like this you it drives you crazy, the damage to your body-the knee that won't properly bear your weight. Sometimes you ache to be taken hard, on your hands and knees, Sam behind you pounding into you relentlessly, or on your back, legs wrapped around Sammy's shoulders.
But your leg can't handle that. It'd be too much strain, so more often than not you do it like this, lying on your side, Sam curled up behind you, pushing in slow and steady with his fingers, or his tongue, supporting your leg as he eases inside you, thick and hard. Until you lose your mind and cling to the arm around your waist, sobbing with every push of Sam's dick into you.
19.
It's already the fourth year when you think you find the answer.
It's got a little bit of everything to it-it's like a crazy quilt of supernatural shit. Seven different cultures that you can recognize which means it's probably more like seventy, and Sam could give you chapter and verse on all of them. There's spell weaving and prayer involved, silver and lead. Charms and symbols that get burned into the weapons you forge and inked into the arms of everyone who will fight.
It's a risky plan but then again, everything is. Hell, living is risky these days and if you're gonna die, you'd rather go like this, sending as many of those motherfuckers back to hell as you can.
20.
"We're ready," you say to Sam one day when you're in the middle of cleaning the guns, and it's a non sequitur but Sam looks up at you and nods, and you realize he's just been waiting for you to get there, to catch up with him. That pisses you off at first-you hate it when Sam coddles you like that-but then he grins and you find yourself grinning back. "Bitch."
Jerk.
Still, you figure there's no reason to go that extra mile and you insist that everyone get in a last few weeks of training. You walk the perimeter a dozen times looking for possible flaws in the security, since you'll be leaving the youngest of the children behind with a handful of adults to watch over them. You spend hours with the other hunters on-line, holding your tongue at their last minute bitching, until you're sure the uneasy alliance will hold.
Sam takes care of Ruby.
The night before you're scheduled to move out you take Sam away from the compound, out into the desert, and the soft sand is still warm against your skin as you spread him out on the ground, rut into him, open him up and fuck him. You're dizzy with wanting him; you can't get enough. Your fingers leave marks on him that you know will come up bruises by morning and his mouth is ruthless, biting and sucking until you know you'll be marked up as well. Your own brand of protection symbols.
The next day you head out. You and Sam are out in front, your baby shined and polished and gleaming in the weak light of a morning sun. Stevie's right behind you, him and Tim in Denzel's tricked out Silverado, and Rachel's riding shotgun on her bike, Angel wrapped around her and holding on tight. A couple dozen more fall in behind you, your kids and some of their parents, hunters, and even some of Ruby's crowd, all wearing the same look of restrained excitement. Pay back time has come.
You look at Sam and it takes you aback a bit, the way it does sometimes when you suddenly see him as if through someone else's eyes, as if you're seeing him as if for the first time. His hair is so long now he has to tie it back to keep it out of his eyes and the sun has baked him brown, so dark that the bright hazel of his eyes are startling bright against his face. Like everyone else, he's desert lean and leathery, with deep lines around his eyes from endless days of staring into the sun. Sam's got about a million charms dangling from around his neck-real ones that the two of you spent hours researching and searching out, and some the younger kids made from clay, imbued with all the hope and trust the children of war can manage. He's wearing a thick leather vest that leaves his arms bare, and he looks hard, terrible and fierce until he glances at you over the roof of the Impala and smiles, and then the image of the avenging angel crumbles and he's just your Sammy again.
A look crosses his face, and you see him struggle, as if exercising muscles long atrophied. Then he opens his mouth and whispers, "I love you," and his voice is thin and brittle from disuse but it's the best thing you've heard in what seems like forever. You might die today, today or tomorrow-you most likely will, sometime before this is over, just like Sam might-but you've had this, you've had him, and no matters what comes next it's all been worth it, to see this look in his eyes.
You smile at him. "Let's rock and roll."
Title: The Fall and Rise
Rating/Pairing: R, Dean/Sam.
Warnings: Reference to underage/adult sex. General spoilers for Season Three.
Prompt: Apocalypse fic.
Summary: After the war, Dean and Sam survive.
The Fall and Rise
The demons sent their virus first. Unleashed it and then watched, amused, as it did its work. The humans tore into each other, infected each other, and then murdered their own species in droves.
They followed that with pestilence. Typhoid, plague, leprosy. Lethal and virulent. The hospitals filled with the sick and suffering, until there wasn't enough room for them all, and then they died wherever they fell. The streets were soon littered with bodies, bloated, bursting open and rotting in the hot sun.
Then the demons brought fire, lit up the heavens with tongues of flame that seared the air and scorched the earth, boiled the seas.
Millions burned.
Hope fled. Fear and panic reigned. Under blood red skies humans became a refugee population, fleeing before the juggernaut of the demons' wrath, struggling to stay alive.
1.
You and Sam survive.
2.
That's all it is at first. Survival. The world is on fire and filled with chaos, and there are thousands of demons, all gunning for your little brother. You might as well have targets painted your backs. So you run. You hide. During the day you scavenge for enough to feed him and a way to shelter him, watch his back. Nights you lay awake, folded awkwardly in the front seat of the Impala, trying to figure out a way to get you and Sam through this to the other side.
You hunt, but only in self-defense. You kill only the things that try to kill you first. You can't afford to get caught above the radar, not anymore, not yet. Not until you're stronger, not until Sam's stronger. Not until you know what you're going to do, and how.
When the time is right you'll fight them, of course. It's not a question of that-never a question of that. You're a Winchester, and so is Sam, and the sons of John Winchester never knuckle under, never give up, never accept defeat.
You'll fight, when the time is right.
But first-first you need to get stronger. First, you need a plan.Before…
Sam saved you. Sam walked into hell and brought you back out with him, but not before the demons carved their marks into you. On the day that crossroads bitch claimed you the hellhounds tore you apart, teeth digging deep into your flesh, separating your muscles from your bones while you screamed your throat raw, and Sam fought Bobby like a wild thing to try to reach you.
It amused your keepers to leave you that way, arms ripped from your sockets, legs broken and dislocated. You spent seven weeks more under their hands, cut and burnt and used, and you know whatever good looks you had are now gone.
There's scar tissue that runs across your face, temple to nose and down your cheek, and a tear in your lower lip that left it crooked. You have a slight lisp you find hard to control when you're tired. There are scars on your back and your arms, too-from the hounds, from the floggings, the brandings-and on your hands and feet where the flesh was burned away. You have a limp you'll carry to your grave.
When it didn't entertain them to make you watch what they did to you, they blinded you again and again, using knives, or hot pokers, sometimes even what passed for their fingers to gouge your eyes out. In the weeks after Sam brought you out you thought you might never see again. Missouri and Bobby were still alive then, and they cooked up poultice after poultice to draw the poison. You lay there sweating and groaning as the burning toxins poured from your eyes and Sam never moved, sat by your bed for days, holding your hand and talking to you softly.
When the bandages came off your eyes were healed but changed. They're bright silver now, and you have no iris, and they look fucking freaky, like outta some weird sci-fi movie. But it's not just the color that's different. It's like you have this x-ray vision now, kind of, like you can see inside people now, to who they are, not just what they look like, as if their souls are written on their faces. You see emotions like colored halos, fear and pain and anger and suspicion.
It's more than you want to know to be honest, although it comes in handy when you can't avoid the towns, when you need to barter for gas or food. Looking in a mirror still makes you a little queasy, though, seeing those eyes that don't look anything like yours staring back at you from the glass. Those eyes and the scars, constant reminders of what happened. Mostly you avoid it if you can, and you've learned to shave without one. It's some kind of fucked up.
3.
Your face heats up when Sam says your high-tech eyes must not work when it comes to you, because you're still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
But then, Sam's always been kind of a girl.
4.
A few months pass. The demons settle into their victory, start getting complacent, stop caring. Most of what's left of mankind is all too willing to serve in exchange for three squares and an end to the uncertainty, and it makes you kind of sick but you try not to think about it too much, because maybe you can't give a damn about saving people you despise.
Once the hunt for Sammy stops being a twenty-four/seven demon free for all and gets handed off to the Department of Fire and Brimstone, or Demons 'R Us, or whatever the hell rinky-dink bureaucracy is in charge of enemies of the state, you get off the road and find a place to squat in the northern part of what used to be Arizona. There are rumors about harmonic convergences and spiritual energies in the area. You figure most of it was New Age crap to bring in the tourists but Sam says there's some truth to it, some of it anyway, and so you let him take the lead in deciding on a place. You check about a dozen abandoned houses in the hills before Sam nods the minute he steps in the door, and then it's your turn to go to work. You grind up agrimony and deersbane, motherwort and snakeroot, make a paste that you work into the rough surface of the adobe bricks before you paint the walls with protective symbols and drill down into the window frames to pour salt.
Sam works some mojo that he says will harness the energies, keep the demons from getting a lock on the place, like creating a kind of mystical white noise, and you unpack your bedrolls and bags, and for the first time in a long time, you sleep on a bed.
5.
You hear about the other children almost by accident. You're out on a run, gathering food and supplies, and you stop at a diner, just for some coffee to keep you going because it's almost dark and you want to get back to Sam before the day is out. You park on the street and put on your dark glasses to hide your eyes, and when you start across you see it, over in vacant lot across the corner from the diner.
It looks like the remains of a bonfire, almost, like the town came out for a high school homecoming celebration. Except whatever it was is over, and there's just the last of the smoldering ashes and a stink in the air that makes you kind of sick.
You go in and sit at the counter and order, and while you're waiting you ask the waitress what's up with the blaze. She gets a funny look on her face and then it bleeds into ugly, the way it does when your new vision kicks in. You almost ask her to stop, because you know it's going to be bad, but she twists her mouth up like she just swallowed something sour and answers you before you can stop her. Tells you they found one of "those demon children," and last night they had the trial and took care of it.
You don't make the connection at first, and then you do. Your stomach clenches and you can taste bile in the back of your throat and you can't imagine the look on your face when you hiss, "You burned her?" The waitress shrinks back from you, and puts a hand to her throat when you take off your dark glasses to stare at her, disbelieving. A couple of guys down the counter look up and see you, see your eyes, and they start to come off of their stools and that's when you book, because you can't afford the attention, you can't afford anyone taking too much interest. Not when you've still got Sam to protect.
So you push your way out the door and throw yourself into your car and drive, and ten miles outside of town you have to pull over and throw up, just to empty your belly of the acid that's fermenting there.
Sam knows there's something the minute you get back and although you don't really want to tell him you know you have to. You know he'd never forgive you if you didn't.
6.
There are two new generations of the children. Six and fifteen, already coming into their powers.
Sam cries when you tell him about the girl. He crumples in on himself and into your arms, and he shakes with grief until you think his bones might come apart. Then he gets mad. Trembles with rage so strong that it rattles the walls on their foundations.
You need to know more if you're going to do anything about it, but there's no way to get hooked in from where you are so you and Sam make a day trip down to what used to be Phoenix, where Sam taps into a signal and starts googling. By evening he has a handful of similar incidents from all around the country, and a dozen ideas about what's going on. He can't explain the why though, why these kids are all coming on-line so young, but the best theory he can come up with makes a hell of a lot sense to you: that somehow their powers got triggered by the war, and they all got switched on like sleeper agents. Dozens of kids who got plugged in but never called up, because they weren't needed, because the demons already had their exit visas.
It's clear the demons don't want the children. They've won their war and they don't need them anymore, and so they've left them to the mercy of humans who, terrified of them and their powers, are slaughtering them, burning them or crucifying them in some horrifying repeat of history. The stories Sam reads to you make you sick, and you're not surprised when Sam gives you that look, that one that says he needs you to be Batman to his Albert Schweitzer. You nod. You're not sure how the two of you will make it work but there's no question that you'll try. It's not the first time you've carried someone out of a fire.
Sam makes a list, names and hometowns, and you spend the next seven weeks on the road, finding and collecting them, and bringing them back to Sam to teach, to guide, to protect. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. It pisses you off when their parents are only too eager to turn them over to you, a virtual stranger, because they're afraid of what their children are and what they might become. Family should mean more than that, you think. Still, you can't deny it makes the job simpler that way.
Some of the children, especially the older ones, have already run away from their families and are living by their wits, turning feral on streets. They're harder to find and harder to convince that you have anything to offer them, and you manage to save only half maybe, maybe even only a third of those.
Sometimes you find a family that, no matter how strong the fear in their eyes when you explain what's going down with their kid, refuse to give their son or daughter away to you like so much damaged property. In those cases, you pack up the whole family, bring them all back with you, figuring it's the only way to save them.
Even the ones that come with you are still frightened and resentful, especially the kids. Wary. They take to Sam a little better, but then Sam's always had that aw, shucks puppy dog thing going for him, even if he is ten feet tall, and anyway, they're a little in awe of the tricks he does to show them they can learn to control these powers they suddenly have. Still, the following weeks are a tough time. The nights are filled by the children's nightmares, their visions, and the days are riddled with chaos as their gifts flare up without control.
Sam's a natural teacher though, and soon everyone can speak Latin as well as English. He teaches them to chant an exorcism rites, and holds contests to see who can draw a Devil's Trap from memory.
7.
After a few months the house in the desert hills isn't big enough anymore. You've got four six year olds, seven fifteen year olds, and three families under your roof-and still more to track down-and even if the house wasn't too small there's the danger that so many people will draw too much attention.
So you start scouting for a new place. Demons hate the heat-reminds them too much of home sweet home, you figure-so you keep to the south, to the deserts. Nothing fits exactly right but when you find an old government research facility just south of Death Valley, with it's own well and a generator you know you can coax back to life, you call it good enough.
You pack up Sam's tribe and move everyone west.
8.
It's easier than you think to keep plugged into what's happening. The complex is filled with computers, sophisticated stuff that puts a gleam in the eyes of the geekier kids, and as soon as you get the generator up and running they take over, cannibalizing the machines and cobbling together a super system that reminds you of Ash's laptop, back in that other lifetime.
You find that demons have taken to the Internet like ducks to water. Sinners to damnation. Whatever. Next thing you know the whole freaking world's a hot zone, no pun intended, so you rig up something that pulls in a wireless signal from Demon Central and Edie, one of the geek squad, sets up an IP that's hidden behind a dozen aliases, and writes a program that changes them out every other day or so.
The demons are arrogant and disorganized-not that this is news-and soon the Web is teeming with information stored on marginally protected vanity sites and My Space accounts. Edie recruits Angel and Sal, two of the smarter kids, and they start monitoring for the keywords Sam gives them. Pretty soon there aren't a whole hell of a lot of passwords they can't break between the three of them.
You've still got the library, too, because some of what you need will always be buried in the dry, brittle pages of antiquity. Sam's put together one of the biggest left in the States, although you've heard that the one in Wales rivals it for some of the ancient texts. Still, wasn't much that Bobby didn't have and after he died trying to take down two of the demons who escaped that night in Wyoming, you traveled across the country to salt and burn his body, and then loaded up everything you could find into two of his vans and towed the Impala behind to get it all back.
9.
Life settles into a routine of sorts. As much as anything can be routine when the world been taken over by soul-sucking demons and you're running from something scarier than the feds could ever be.
There are two priorities-survival first, and then resistance. Survival you're getting down pretty good-there's a roof above everyone's head, the well stays clean, and nobody goes hungry, even if the best you can say about the food sometimes is that it's filling. You're building a decent inventory of medical supplies and almost everyone's gone through your training in field first-aid and can manage a decent suture. The kids get classes in everything from math to machine repair, and you find a job for everyone, from the two nurses to the mechanic, to the seamstress who used to design bridal gowns. Every skill can be translated into something that helps keep you alive.
Resistance is a tougher nut to crack. Sam surprises you-you expect a bigger fight when it comes to training the kids, especially the little ones, but Sam just sets his jaw and says childhood is a luxury that mankind can't afford anymore. So you start them young, as soon as they can reasonably hold a gun, and you train them how to shoot, how to fight, and when to run away, trying to make it a game when you can, just like you used to do for Sam. The older kids get less of the fairy tale and more of the up close and personal-how to dislocate an arm, how to break a neck, what's the quickest way to sever a head.
The switch in Sam's brain keeps flipping and his powers grow and mutate every day. He has visions again, but now he can control them better, and there aren't any more headaches. He can still move objects, and now he's got the Obi-Wan thing that Andy had. He's saved your asses more than once with the whole 'these aren't the 'droids you're looking for' routine.
He can read minds, which pisses the older kids off-he can generally tell when they're gonna pull shit before they've even made the decision to try. He can summon fire and wind from out of thin air and make them do whatever he wants. You watch him stand on the roof and call for thunder and lightening, while the wind whips his hair and carves new valleys out of the sand.
You begin to accept that there may be no limits to what Sam can do, or at least, no limits that matter in the scheme of things. So you take care of the business of staying alive and protecting the people who count on you, while Sam learns to use his new gifts, focus them. You watch him struggle with each new self-revelation, and you know Sam is trying to understand what it all means. Why he was chosen, what his destiny is. You know if the world can be saved, it's Sam who will save it.
And you know if it can't be saved, it is Sam that will doom it once and forever.
10.
There are still hunters out there. You avoid them in the beginning-they were only a step below the demons in their determination to get to Sam, and you'd broken off with all but a handful before the war started. But getting up close and personal with Judgment Day has a tendency to make a man reevaluate, and the bottom line is they know more than anyone else about how to deal with what you're facing.
So you're cautious, but you start seeking them out. Slowly, you track down other resistance cells around the country and the hunters still out there on their own, taking the bad guys down one demon at a time. You hook up-carefully, with caution-and hide your communications inside spam and porn chat sites. Sam smiles and says you enjoy your work too much.
The hunters still don't like Sam-and they really don't like hearing there are more kids like him-but you're past having patience with that shit, and you tell they can either get on board and be part of the solution, or they can keep the fuck away from you and your family. You don't actually say, "try to hurt me and mine and I'll rip your dick off" but you get close enough that the message comes through loud and clear, and one by one they grudgingly agree to a tenuous alliance.
There's no love lost but you're your father's son. You figure out a way to make it work.
11.
It's around this time when Ruby shows up again.
She walks in off the desert, right in the middle of dinner, and thirty pairs of eyes are on you and Sam as she sashays up to your table, bold as brass, demanding a sit down. You roll your eyes and tell the lady to fuck off, wondering how fast you can get to the Colt, but Sam surprises you by nodding his head. Those thirty pairs of eyes narrow as they follow the three of you out of the room.
You're a little surprised when you hear what she has to say. Seems mankind's not alone in this whole good versus evil thing. Turns out there's some jockeying going on for the corner office in Hell, a bit of dissatisfaction with the current management. There are demons on your side, she tells you, although that gets funnier every time you think about it. Or, well-maybe not on your side but against the others, and in this fight the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Something like that.
It's turns into the one thing you and Sammy fight about. You don't trust them, don't trust anything with flat black eyes, but Sam won't be talked out of it, says you need them. He ignores you, agrees to an uneasy coalition, a collaboration of sorts. Shared intelligence, shared strategy. There's a big meeting-demon/human summit so to speak-and Ruby sits on one side of the table, Sam on the other. You sit by Sam's side and glare at her generals, same as they glare back at you, and your eyes don't work on them but you don't need them to. You know what you're dealing with and no matter what Sam says, you still don't like it.
Sam's says you should be grateful-says it was Ruby that helped Sam save you. Says he knows what he's doing, and tells you not to worry.
You glare anyway. Wasn't Ruby walked into Hell, eyes bleeding and hair on fire, soul ripped in two, to save you.
12.
It's the middle of the second year when Sam stops talking. You're not sure why-you're not even sure exactly when it started. Just one day you realized that Sam had been awfully quiet for a few days and when you ask him what's up, he smiles and shrugs and pushes gently into your mind.
It's weird at first, Sam in and out of your head all the time. Takes some getting used to. It's more efficient than talking-no two ways about that. You don't gotta try to figure out what Sam means, you know what Sam means, the minute he slides into your mind. It's like words were the middlemen and without them you get to skip the translation and go right to the source.
It'd be more scary if you thought Sam was rooting around in your head for his own reasons, and in fact, that makes you real uptight in the beginning because yeah, you've been living in each other's pockets for years but you've got a right to your privacy. Didn't take long before you stopped worrying about that though, and now you're pretty sure his ethics are in order on this one. Sam doesn't trespass any more than he has to. He doesn't try to read your mind, just shares his with you.
In some ways, you communicate better than you ever did before, faster, clearer-best signal to noise ratio ever. You feel closer to him than you ever have before. But if you're honest with yourself, you miss Sam's voice. The way he sometimes went on and on about the obscure shit he read, the weird ideas that came into his head. Sometimes you find yourself talking about nothing at all, just to fill the silence.
13.
Turns out you're a little slow on the uptake. It takes the end of the world for you to admit to yourself what you want. What you've always wanted you realize, after the shock wears off, at least someplace deep inside yourself. You realize that's why it hurt so much when he left you and Dad, all those years ago. It's why you hold on so tightly to him now. You love him. You're in love with him.
Jesus. You're in love with Sam.
The thought makes you scared and giddy and a little bit ashamed, and maybe ashamed that you're not more ashamed. He's your little brother, for fuck's sake. It's your job to watch over him, to protect him-not to take advantage of him. You should feel guilty about what you feel, you know that. It's not like you don't know it's wrong.
But it's the most perfect thing in your life, this thing you feel for Sammy. You think maybe it's the least selfish thing you've ever done, loving him. There's nothing you wouldn't do for him, nothing you wouldn't give up for him. Nothing you wouldn't do to see him happy.
Love makes you stupid. Distracted. You go around grinning for days. People look at you like you're six different kinds of weird and the kids take advantage of your sudden good mood to skip out of training with every lame excuse in the world. Word spreads like wildfire around the compound, and you lose spectacularly at cards three nights in a row, because it seems like you suddenly misplaced your poker face.
Sam's confused, you can tell. He looks at you when he thinks you won't notice, with that funny little furrow between his brows he gets when he's trying to solve a puzzle. You've always felt like such an open book with Sam, like you wear heart on your sleeve when it comes to him, with nothing to hide behind, that it surprises you at first that he can't see everything you're feeling, just from looking at your face. You're grateful though, feeling like you do right now, all exposed and vulnerable-you've got some time to catch your breath and figure out what you're going to do.
In the end, though, turns out the feeling inside you is so big there's only so long you can hide it, and really only one way the chips can fall. The day it happens you're in the kitchen, washing dishes, and you start when Sam suddenly wraps himself around you from behind, sliding his hands down your forearms to braid those enormous fingers with yours. He's warm from the sun, and you can smell the fresh sweat dampening his shirt, and when he leans his forehead head against the back of your neck you shiver. This is wrong, you think, but that's an old notion, without any sting left, and you can't stop yourself from leaning back. Sam shifts to take your weight, letting your hips settled in the cradle between his legs and your breath catches in your throat. Your heart's beating wildly and you clutch your fingers around Sam's, enjoying the way they slide together in the warm, slickness of the soap, and then you tilt your head toward him.
"I love you," you whisper. You feel awkward, brave, sick to your stomach. "I love you," you repeat more loudly.
Sam's joy floods your brain, bright and brilliant. You're both trembling, and you close your eyes and whisper, "I want you."
You don't need to see the colors to feel the love.
14.
Your numbers keep growing. More of the children find you-just following the psychic hotline, you tease Sam, and you have to twist out of the way fast when he goes to punch you-and two babies get born. One dies but the other one lives, and her parents name her Hope. Sam cries and doesn't even call you on it when you tease him about being a girl, even though your own eyes are just as wet. Two of the older kids get married, although it's just a made up ceremony, but you've got a priest hanging out with you now so at least it's sort of official, at least in the eyes of someone.
You've got a couple of hunters living at the compound, too, Tim and Denzel, guys who knew your dad and respected him well enough to give his sons the benefit of the doubt. They're not real comfortable around the kids but they don't mess with them, and keep to themselves off in a side wing.
One of the older kids, Stevie, takes to following Denzel around, asking questions all the time. Stevie's one of the first kids you found, a tough little motherfucker living on the streets, turning tricks with humans and demons alike, and he damn near sliced you open throat to groin the first time you tried to get too close. He bucks the rules on a regular basis but he's basically a good kid, even if you have to sit on him a lot.
At some point a couple of the kids go to Sam and tell him Stevie's not sleeping in the dorm anymore, and Sam pulls you aside. He worried and of course you're supposed to do something about it. You're not sure when you got elected Dad but after listening to Sam bitch for three days you have an awkward conversation with Stevie, who basically tells you you're an okay guy but he's been taking care of himself for a while now, so fuck off and mind your own business. You try talking to Denzel, who doesn't say shit, just raises an eyebrow and waits until you turn red and stutter to a halt, and then says pretty much the same thing as Stevie.
You give up. You tell Sam it's none of your damn business, or his, if the kid likes dick-and remind him that he's half of a gay incestuous relationship so, stones and glass houses, Sammy boy-and put it out of your head. It's their choice as far as you can tell and nobody's getting hurt, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say about most things happening in the world today.
15.
The third year is bad.
There's a drought that turns everything from New York to L.A. to dust, chokes the life out of most every living thing. As the supply of food dwindles, some of the survivors take to the roads like packs of wild dogs, fighting over the few bones that are left, while others wrap themselves up in some new kind of fucked up fundamentalism, filled with fear and driven by a twisted, masochistic ecstasy. You're honestly not sure which is scarier, the fucking road warriors or the religious freaks, and both are a threat to Sam and your kids, and so you just keep everyone close, hunker down and learn to make do.
Then the epidemic comes, and that's almost the ballgame. The disease isn't demon bred but it doesn't matter-it kills as effectively as anything the demons could have come up with, just as ruthlessly, and it spreads like wildfire, carried on the wind, so there's no almost no escaping it.
It's an ugly disease. Painful. Marked by high fevers and delirium, the skin turning so tender that the slightest touch causes its victims to curl up in agony. Most die, strangled by their own swollen tongues, black blood pouring from their eyes and mouths.
You're relatively protected out in the desert, but it doesn't stop death from finding its way to your door. Hope is the first to fall prey to it; she's too young, too fragile to fight it, and a dozen more follow her, children and adults.
You don't notice when it gets its claws into you, one of your more stupid mistakes. You tell yourself you're just tired, exhausted with trying to hold things together as panic slowly festers in your little tribe, and it's the desert, so hell, who's not used to feeling too damn hot all the time. Your bones ache but that's not unusual either-there's always more work than muscle.
You're training the older kids, going hand to hand with Rachel, who's going to beat out Sam for the role of Sasquatch if she doesn't quite growing, when you feel the dizziness and the nausea. You shrug it off, step back and drink a cup of water to clear your head but it doesn't help. Rachel's face swims in front of your eyes and everything seems too bright, too loud. You're down on one knee before you can catch yourself, and that's when you get really scared because nothing seems to do what you tell it-you can't stand, can't see, can't make your voice work. You hear Rachel whisper , "Dean," and then one of the other kids, Adam you think, starts yelling for Sam, and you want to say don't bother Sammy, I'm fine, just give me a minute, but you still can't make your mouth work and everything is getting darker and that's the last thing you remember for a long, long time.
16.
Hurts.
Hurts, god, hurts. Hot. You're so fucking hot, you're burning up. Can't breathe past your own tongue, thick in your mouth, and you can taste blood. You're in Hell again-every touch is agony and you shrink back from the hands that refuse to stop reaching for you, tears streaming down the sides of your face because you can't do this again, you just can't, you can't, god, you're ashamed but you're not strong enough.
You open your eyes and Bobby is there. You reach for him, beg him to help you but his eyes turn black so you try to run, try to get away but they're all around you, the demons, and it feels like it did when they'd strip your flesh from your bones, using sharp, thin knives to flay you, peeling away layer after layer to expose raw, bleeding muscle below. God, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. You try to pray-Sammy used to pray, you remember that now-but the words burn your tongue and you choke on them.
You hear Dad's voice but you can't see him. No matter how hard you try, you can't find him in the red fog burning up your brain. You're glad-Dad's not supposed to be here. He's saved now, in Heaven or something-you gotta believe that. Got to believe all those sacrifices for you saved him in the end.
Someone's making you sit up and you whimper and try to pull away. You can't help it-you want to beg them not to touch you, it hurts so much. They're trying to make you drink but you can't bear the weight of the water on your tongue and it dribbles down your chin, and you're still so hot it seems as though the water should burst into steam the minute it touches your skin.
You're dying, you think, and the hardest part is that you're leaving Sam behind.
Dean.
Hands. Hurts, hurts, hurts, and you cry out, try to push them away but these hands won't let go, not even when you scream, dig your nails in and claw. These hands dig in and hold on and pull you close, and there's a moment when the pain is so intense that you think surely this is it, surely you're going to go mad, and then suddenly the fire in your brain goes out, just like that, like a match being blown out, and you collapse in the strong arms wrapped around you, damp and shivering as the fever breaks.
"Sam?"
Not letting you go. Never letting you go.
17.
It takes a while, but you mend. It's slow and frustrating and you spend a lot of the time pissed off about what you can't do. Even after the fever's gone it's weeks before you're strong enough to get out of bed, and still more before you're really back in the game.
You're past the worst of it now though. You buried the last of your dead over six weeks ago, and there haven't been any new outbreaks reported in southern California. Hope's parents announce they're pregnant again-in fact, there are three new babies on the way. Stevie's lost that helpless look he's had ever since Denzel died, and he's taken over training the littlest kids, who follow him around like puppies. The dark circles under Sam's eyes are finally gone and his face no longer looks haunted.
18.
You're on your feet for the first time in weeks, working in the shop when you feel it, that welcome gentle touch in your mind and a rising heat between your legs. Sam's desire and Sam's need. It's been so long and you close your eyes, dizzy with the want.
You make him wait, though. Make both of you wait, force both of you to savor the anticipation. You finish sanding the surface of the new shelf you're building and lay on a coat of primer before you wash your hands and your tools, all the while feeling Sam's fond exasperation and rising impatience. You're finally on your way back to your rooms when Andi stops you at the door with a question about the new security systems. Andi's just turned eighteen and she flirts as naturally as breathing, same as you, and you take the minute to answer her question. You can feel Sam's spike of jealousy and a giddy feeling bubbles up inside of you, and when you grin at Andi she turns bright red, almost down to her toenails.
When you finally get away you find Sam in the bedroom, already naked and standing in front of the window, stroking his dick, the sun cutting a swath of light across his broad shoulders and chest.
"Giving everyone a show?" you ask with a grin, feeling Sam's grouchy annoyance tickling at the edges of your mind, and then Sam's shields fall and you're flooded by it, love and need and desire, hot and searing, and you're lost before you can even think of saving yourself.
You meet each other halfway across the room and your hands are hungry for Sam, running up and down his arms and back and ass. Sam kisses you, mouth open and slick, and you groan, wrap yourself around him and let Sam carry you down to the bed.
Times like this you it drives you crazy, the damage to your body-the knee that won't properly bear your weight. Sometimes you ache to be taken hard, on your hands and knees, Sam behind you pounding into you relentlessly, or on your back, legs wrapped around Sammy's shoulders.
But your leg can't handle that. It'd be too much strain, so more often than not you do it like this, lying on your side, Sam curled up behind you, pushing in slow and steady with his fingers, or his tongue, supporting your leg as he eases inside you, thick and hard. Until you lose your mind and cling to the arm around your waist, sobbing with every push of Sam's dick into you.
19.
It's already the fourth year when you think you find the answer.
It's got a little bit of everything to it-it's like a crazy quilt of supernatural shit. Seven different cultures that you can recognize which means it's probably more like seventy, and Sam could give you chapter and verse on all of them. There's spell weaving and prayer involved, silver and lead. Charms and symbols that get burned into the weapons you forge and inked into the arms of everyone who will fight.
It's a risky plan but then again, everything is. Hell, living is risky these days and if you're gonna die, you'd rather go like this, sending as many of those motherfuckers back to hell as you can.
20.
"We're ready," you say to Sam one day when you're in the middle of cleaning the guns, and it's a non sequitur but Sam looks up at you and nods, and you realize he's just been waiting for you to get there, to catch up with him. That pisses you off at first-you hate it when Sam coddles you like that-but then he grins and you find yourself grinning back. "Bitch."
Jerk.
Still, you figure there's no reason to go that extra mile and you insist that everyone get in a last few weeks of training. You walk the perimeter a dozen times looking for possible flaws in the security, since you'll be leaving the youngest of the children behind with a handful of adults to watch over them. You spend hours with the other hunters on-line, holding your tongue at their last minute bitching, until you're sure the uneasy alliance will hold.
Sam takes care of Ruby.
The night before you're scheduled to move out you take Sam away from the compound, out into the desert, and the soft sand is still warm against your skin as you spread him out on the ground, rut into him, open him up and fuck him. You're dizzy with wanting him; you can't get enough. Your fingers leave marks on him that you know will come up bruises by morning and his mouth is ruthless, biting and sucking until you know you'll be marked up as well. Your own brand of protection symbols.
The next day you head out. You and Sam are out in front, your baby shined and polished and gleaming in the weak light of a morning sun. Stevie's right behind you, him and Tim in Denzel's tricked out Silverado, and Rachel's riding shotgun on her bike, Angel wrapped around her and holding on tight. A couple dozen more fall in behind you, your kids and some of their parents, hunters, and even some of Ruby's crowd, all wearing the same look of restrained excitement. Pay back time has come.
You look at Sam and it takes you aback a bit, the way it does sometimes when you suddenly see him as if through someone else's eyes, as if you're seeing him as if for the first time. His hair is so long now he has to tie it back to keep it out of his eyes and the sun has baked him brown, so dark that the bright hazel of his eyes are startling bright against his face. Like everyone else, he's desert lean and leathery, with deep lines around his eyes from endless days of staring into the sun. Sam's got about a million charms dangling from around his neck-real ones that the two of you spent hours researching and searching out, and some the younger kids made from clay, imbued with all the hope and trust the children of war can manage. He's wearing a thick leather vest that leaves his arms bare, and he looks hard, terrible and fierce until he glances at you over the roof of the Impala and smiles, and then the image of the avenging angel crumbles and he's just your Sammy again.
A look crosses his face, and you see him struggle, as if exercising muscles long atrophied. Then he opens his mouth and whispers, "I love you," and his voice is thin and brittle from disuse but it's the best thing you've heard in what seems like forever. You might die today, today or tomorrow-you most likely will, sometime before this is over, just like Sam might-but you've had this, you've had him, and no matters what comes next it's all been worth it, to see this look in his eyes.
You smile at him. "Let's rock and roll."