SPN Fanfic: The Valley of Dying Stars
Title: The Valley of Dying Stars
Genre/pairing: Gen
Rating: R?
Word count: ~1300
Summary: Dick wins.
Spoilers: goes AU somewhere during 7x23.
Warnings: Character death. Poetry references.
Disclaimer: Please don’t sue me.
Note: Written for the planet destruction square on my dark_bingo card, and maybe the death square on my hc_bingo card. (Hurt 1, Comfort 0.)
Dean decides that the first thing he’s going to do when he finally kicks it is have Ash track down T. S. Eliot so Dean can personally choke the living shit out of him. Or whatever it is you can do to kill people who are already dead.
He’d thought it was a catchy little poem when he read The Stand one summer, laid up with a broken leg and bored to tears until Sam had picked up the tatty paperback for him at a secondhand store. Now, the last lines to “The Hollow Men” run on an endless loop in his head and it’s making him want to shove an ice pick deep into his brain.
Haha.
He stretches back on the grass and tries not to think about Big Macs and waffles, beer and Philly cheese steaks.
“French fries,” he groans aloud.
Sam sits on the grass next to him, leaning against the pink granite headstone. Dean had been looking for a safe place to retreat, they were much too noticeable on the barely trafficked roads these days. Heading west on I-70 and Dean hadn’t known where else to go until he remembered Mom’s grave, in a Campbell family plot in Illinois of all places.
Sam stares at the clouds, radiant streaks of gold and red lit up by the setting of the sun.
“Pretty,” Sam says, his fingers absently scratching at the earth.
“Yeah, Sammy. Real pretty.”
The first few years hadn’t been all that different from everything that came before. They still traveled relatively freely around the country in a string of stolen cars. Dick had retreated to some hidden fucking lair like a villain in a Batman comic, and they couldn’t turn him up no matter how many rocks they looked under. But, they kept trying to decapitate leviathans wherever they could. They kept trying to make things better, make things right.
As time went by the people in every town looked slower and stupider, seemed to behave more like sheep than humans. And it got harder and harder to find organic restaurants and markets because the proprietors kept turning up dead or missing. By the end of the third year they were hungry all the time, a low-grade gnawing deep in their guts.
Dean lets out a weak laugh, remembering the first time they’d tried to butcher a cow they’d spirited away from a pasture in a stolen horse trailer. Sam trying to look up cuts of meat on an increasingly spotty internet connection, Dean covered in blood and entrails from his ears to his boots. What a fucking mess.
That had worked for awhile though, hauling slabs of beef around in a refrigerated truck, stealing fruit from orchards and ears of corn straight from the stalks. Still trying to track down Dick, still trying to keep up with the big-mouths that were seeping into every corner of the world with their farms and factories and breeding operations.
Then they’d realized-almost too late-that the animals were being pumped up with additives before they were even slaughtered, and the crops were sprayed with pesticides that contained the same deadly chemical as the contaminated corn syrup. And that was the end of that.
Dean watches the sinking sun as he thinks about his next move. Ten years of dodging leviathans and their mindless human slaves, ten years of eating less food each day than they had the day before, ten years of slowly turning into skeletal shadows of their former selves, and it had all led to this point. To Mary’s grave.
They’d lost.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says as he watches the clouds drift and break apart. “I’ve done a shit job of looking out for you.”
“Hungry,” Sam says.
“I know buddy. We’re out of food.”
It’s a lie, they still have a trunk full of cupcakes and canned meat and hot dogs and fucking pie, but he hadn’t let Sam touch any of it for a couple of days.
They had realized too late what a terrible idea it had been to give in and start raiding food from the commissaries that kept the slave laborers fed as they grew and harvested and manufactured the poisoned food supply. But they’d been kitten-weak and desperately hungry and they thought they’d be okay if they took turns, one to eat while the other watched his back.
The problem was that they couldn’t really watch each other’s backs; the confusion and disorientation and apathy produced by the tainted food were also symptoms of malnutrition. Dean was so stupid from hunger at one point that he was forgetting obvious things, like drinking some fucking water, and Sam was furious-scared when he came around and made them start carrying canteens around their necks at all times.
By the time they realized that the doped food was having a cumulative effect on them, like mercury or arsenic, and that it was taking longer and longer to shake off their lethargy each time they let themselves eat, it had pretty much been too late.
Dean had swum awake one morning out of a misty, muddled fog to see Sam sitting over him, worry pinching his sunken, starved features.
“Dean. You in there?”
Dean groaned.
“I didn’t think you were coming back this time,” Sam had said, eyes bright. “We can’t eat any more of this crap. They’ll find us, they’ll send us to the goddamn factories.”
Dean had sat up and immediately black swirls swam before him. He laid back down with a groan.
“When did you eat, Sammy?”
“I shot a squirrel a couple of days ago.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Blew it in half but there was still some meat left.”
“Do you think maybe you can try to get me one more squirrel? Maybe a rabbit? You need to eat again. Then we can regroup.”
“I’ll try, man. I’m a pretty lousy shot these days.” He pushed up from the chair and swayed on shaky legs. “But we’re sharing what I find. I’m not eating any more of their poison.”
Dean had found him four hours later passed out underneath a tree. He’d propped Sam up and started force feeding him from a can of beans. Sam had looked betrayed, had shouted “No, goddammit, I’m done!” But Dean was not ready to watch Sam’s body turn that final corner and start breaking down his own organs for energy, and he was resolute. He’d begged Sam to take one last turn with the food and Sam had given in.
It was scary how fast Sam turned docile, went from shrugging Dean off to eating everything Dean put in front of him.
And then Dean had just kept feeding him.
The clouds are making Dean dizzy and he knows it’s time to act. Probably past time.
“You with me Sam?” Dean’s voice has grown hoarse. He had really hoped Sam would come around again, that they could make one last decision together as a team. Two days just wasn’t enough time to shake off the stupor, and Dean doesn’t have two more.
“Dad?” Sam asks.
“Right. Okay then.” He sits up, guesses that answers that question. “Fuck this place. Let’s go get a beer at the Roadhouse.” He pulls out his ivory-handled Colt.
“I promise this won’t hurt Sammy.”
One for Sam, one for him.
Sam turns his trusting eyes to Dean and holds still as Dean rests the gun against Sam’s temple. Dean closes his own eyes and pulls the trigger.
He’s crying, hand shaking as he brings the gun to his own mouth. Just before he pulls the trigger a second time, he opens his eyes, sees the rusting dog tags Sam holds in his left hand.