Fic, Fic, Glorious Fic
Title: Hope
Rating: PG 18 (OH SNAP)
Pairing/Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby
Notes: 1, 238 words. This is basically my worst-case scenario.
Disclaimers: NOT MINE DAMNIT! STOP ASKING ME!
Summary: Sam’s lost Dean, and lost his way. Even with his new power, he can’t find him. (Post NRftW)
Sam Winchester was alone.
He sat next to the body. The shell of a man who had led him through life by the hand. The man who had explained puberty to him, who would make him dinner every night and keep the motel room from being infested by cockroaches.
The man who had saved him from death more times then imaginable, and the man who was now in fire. Because of him.
The soft whimpering of the hellhound that he was holding in the room was barely audible over his breathing, still harsh, still rocking. It was standing in the corner; it’s gruesome face low to the ground. And he could see it. Watch its long, thick tail tuck between his legs. It was scared of him. That was good.
Dean’s blood was soaking through his clothes, sticking them to his skin. He remembered that this felt like when Dean had convinced dad to go boating when he was seven and he’d had to wear a wetsuit. The blood was the only thing keeping him warm, cold seeping into his bones.
Bobby was still pounding on the door, yelling for Sam to open up, to stop this. He held it closed with barely a thought, just as he had cornered the hellhound.
He knew his eyes had changed, were glowing maybe. He was trying so hard, searching every inch of space he could reach, to find something, anything to help him. To find his brother.
To save him.
Bobby was getting his crowbar from the truck, fed up with slamming on the door with the palms of his hands. He didn’t know that a demon, one of Lilith’s minions who had remained behind, was planning to kill the older hunter. He dismissed the demon with a twitch, expelling him by pulling the black smoke out of the elderly man and crushing it until it imploded.
There was a family of robins in the tree three streets down. Spirits who had no intention of harming anyone were floating around, one of them a small boy who’d been hit by a car. The hellhound was scared; Lilith’s pet, and conscious that its job was despicable to humans. It didn’t care.
Sam was probing its mind for any clue, and was finding nothing.
So he snapped its neck.
These powers were easy to control now. Powerful and pulsing. They were more then the antichrist. He was connected to everything, could feel everything. Every death and birth and fight and fright was running through his mind. He could feel hell knocking into the side of his head; hear the terrified -no, agonized- screams of those who were trapped within.
He focused, sifting through screams that he knew weren’t Deans’, desperate to find him.
But he couldn’t.
Bobby was climbing the stairs, walking down the hallway. He felt the strength in the older man’s arms as his friend swung the crowbar at the top pane of glass in the door. He changed the makeup if just before the crowbar struck, and the hard metal merely sunk into the doorframe and then ricocheted out, sending the crowbar flying from Bobby’s hands and down the hall.
Dean’s pain, terror, anguish. One would’ve thought it’d be palpable, but there was nothing. He couldn’t find ANYTHING.
Sam screamed out loud, broken beyond repair, and released his power to the world.
All the windows in the house shattered, blew out in the shockwave. The robin nest became silent with the death of its babies. A raccoon ran from the scene, suddenly deaf, while Bobby fell to his knees, overcome by sorrow and fear. The tinkling glass from the windows rained down on his back, bouncing off his coat and landing on the floor.
He wondered if Sam was holding the police back too, sure someone must’ve called them by now. He dragged himself to his feet and looked through the broken window, staring at Sam and his tears. Jagged shards of glass floated around him, orbiting slowly. And there was Dean.
Poor, stalwart Dean, lying next to Ruby in a pool of his own blood and strips of his own skin. His eyes were wide open and terrified, frozen in shock by rigor. He’d been dead for awhile, hours. And Bobby had been trying to get in for the same amount of time.
“Sam.” He whispered through the broken door, and the last remaining Winchester opened his eyes slowly, looking at him blankly with neon green pupils.
“Bobby. Come in.”
And just like that, the entrance creaked open, pausing just wide enough for Bobby to get in. He walked through, and the door closed with a soft click behind him.
“I can’t find him Bobby.” Sam whispered, sounding hopeless. “I can feel all of them, everything. Just not Dean.” He looked at his friend with those despairing eyes, begging him.
“Help me find him.” His voice was tiny, shakey.
“I’m sorry son. I can’t.”
The air become charged, not with electricity, but with that feeling he remembered form when he was a kid, and someone would dare their friend to swallow poprocks and down a liter of coke. All the kids would stand around, waiting to see if their friend was going to succumb to the legend of detonation.
It was like waiting for your best friend to explode.
He slowly moved closer, testing Sam like he would a wounded animal. He knew this boy had more power in his little finger then most had in their entire bodies, and he was scared.
“Bobby. You need to help me.” Tears were twisting their way down the young man’s face. Bobby stared at the sharp pieces of glass surrounding the boy and blinked.
“Can’t really help when you’re keeping me out son.”
Sam looked up at him, unadulterated confusion on his face. He truly didn’t see how the rotating shards were a problem. Bobby gestured to them, and only then did Sam understand.
He blinked, and they fell to the floor in a wave of reflecting light and chiming.
Bobby watched all this happen, then crunched over the glass in his steel toed boots. He slowly sat next to the only family he had left and stared down at the hunter who’d become his son, Dean.
His heart twisted in pain at the sight of him, wrecked by claws and teeth and fear.
“Damn it Dean… You-“ But Sam cut him off.
“You love us.”
It wasn’t a question. Bobby looked into Sam’s eyes and saw only surprise.
“You knew that already.”
“But I didn’t understand…. Just how much.”
The tears had stopped, drying on his cheeks.
“We’re the only family you’ve got, except for a sister in Idaho that won’t talk to you anymore. She thinks you’re crazy and you hate her for it.” Sam Blinked. “I can kill her for you, if you want.”
The comment was casual and offhanded, but Bobby shook his head quickly.
“No Sam, that’s not what I want.”
They were quiet, listening only to the usual nighttime noises of the almost-morning. The smell of soon to rise sun was something Bobby always enjoyed. But not tonight. Not when this hunter, this warrior, was on the ground and looking so small. So broken.
So far gone.
“I miss him Bobby.”
“I know son.”
“No…No you don’t. He was more then my brother. He was my hope.”
Bobby said nothing.
“Where has my hope gone?”