"The Road Goes Ever On" (25/30) (Sam/Dean)
The Road Goes Ever On (25/30)
(1900 words)
Warnings: Teenchesters (Sam is 16, Dean is 20)
Alternate reality/pre-series.
Rated: Adult (Mild Wincest, natural/supernatural violence, disturbing themes)
Additional warning: This chapter contains extremely graphic violence. Seriously. This is F'd up. Proceed with caution.
Links to previous installments under the cut.
(1) * (2) * (3) * (4) * (5) * (6) * (7) * (8) * (9) * (10) * (11) * (12) * (13) * (14) * (15) * (16) * (17) * (18) * (19) * (20) * (21) * (22) * (23) * (24) *
Twenty-Five
"Son of a bitch, don't you do it," Dean breathes. "Don't you do it."
Does no good to protest. Dean can't stop this from happening. He knows he can't. And he's never seen this before, not with his own eyes, but --
"John Winchester, if you don't pull your head outta your ass I'll snap it off at the neck. Those boys need you," Bobby says.
From where Dean's watching, peeking around the corner and way up, he can see Dad finish off the bottle Uncle Bobby didn't want to give him. He's five years old and he wanted to play with Bobby's old hound dog, but he knows better than to go around the grownups when they have beer.
"You didn't see her, Bobby," Dad says. He sounds like he's had a bad cold, all scratchy. "On the ceiling, cut open, and then fire… it was hellfire, Bobby. I saw it all. You tell me now, how could I ever forget?"
Saul hums a tuneless melody to himself and dandles Benjamin on his knee. Benjamin's too little for that and he squalls like a stuck pig. "Hush, now," Saul says absently, tracking Hannah's progress up the wall. "Up she goes, up she goes. There's a girl."
Hannah's mouth is open too far in her soundless scream. The corners of her mouth have cracked, chapped dry already and bleeding now. Her life's blood drips through Dean, wet and heavy.
Dean wants to look away, but he can't. He's not allowed to. And he won't. This is what she brought Dean here to see. He has to watch all of it. Jesus. He'd asked to see what happened to her. But he didn't this it'd be this. How could he have?
Saul tilts his head and bounces Benjamin up and down like a hobbyhorse. Benjamin's not crying anymore, more making these miserable little squeaks.
"Not everyone gets a chance to say goodbye," Saul -- no, fuck calling him that, that's the name of the man whose body he stole. He's a demon, the demon, the fucking bastard yellow-eyed demon, and Dean can't do a damn thing about it.
"See you around, kid." The yellow-eyed demon blows her a kiss. "Or not."
A gash, ruby red and ragged, slices itself open across Hannah's middle, where she'd have carried Benjamin. Oh, God. It's not like Dean had thought it would be, like he dreaded. It's worse. And he can't look away.
Hannah's mouth closes on the scream, then her lips part, scarlet drops falling from them to patter softly on the dirt floor. She still doesn't make any sound when she speaks, but Dean's staring right at that bloody mouth and he knows exactly what she's said: Joey!
The demon flicks his fingertips at Hannah. Hannah bursts into flames, Hannah burns, and Dean can't stop it.
Benjamin isn't crying anymore.
"Not bad for starters, hmm?" The demon bounces Benjamin one last time before he stands, tucking the baby underneath his arm. Benjamin dangles there, limp, as the demon walks underneath Hannah burning on the ceiling. He reaches up to catch her string of lucky dimes as the cord they're strung on breaks, the coins falling into his gloved hand. "Too bad that old charm against warding off evil doesn't work so well, hmm? Just goes to show you shouldn't put your faith in superstition."
Hannah's eyes snap open. She looks at Dean, directly at Dean, and God knows how, but Dean knows she, the dying woman, sees him as if he's there in the flesh. She mouths another word, one single word. "You."
She might have had more to say. Dean will never know, because that's when the flames cover Hannah completely, burying her inside them. The stink of burning flesh chokes Dean; he gags, spitting bile.
"Suppose you and I should be on our way, shouldn't we?" the demon asks Benjamin, tossing him into the air and catching him, careful of the lintel, ducking his way outside casual as if the whole place isn't coming down around them.
Benjamin's head lolls on his neck. The demon turns, Dean able to see his profile by the firelight, his smirk fading.
Dean realizes that Benjamin's dead at the same time a wave of vicious gladness that he's dead hits. "No. Please, no," a raw voice begs, one Dean almost doesn't recognize as his own.
"That would be my luck," the demon mutters. Dean doesn't know how he can hear it above the roar of the fire and the shanty burning down, but he can. "Shoddy craftsmanship for something supposedly higher than the angels. It's a wonder the race has survived this long. Well. I suppose I have to start again, now. Live and learn, hmm?" He tosses Benjamin up too high, and fails to catch him on the way down, stepping out of the way. "Live and learn."
"I'll kill you," Dean swears, his throat closing up from the inside. He doesn't have a body here to run with, but he tries, he does his best to make a lunge at the demon.
Dean doesn't make it. But running past him, no, through him, a skinny kid does. Joey screams, banshee-loud, throwing himself against the demon's legs and beating at him with his small fists. There's no sense in what Joey's shrieking; it's not really words.
Dean understands them anyway.
"Don't," he tries to say, unsteady, even though he knows Joey won't hear him. "Come on. Don't."
The demon looks down at Joey, annoyed as he'd be at a flea bite.
"No!" Dean yells, too late. The demon's kicked Joey hard as a man Saul's size can. Joey rolls and tumbles into the sweetgrass. He lies still and pale.
"I'll kill you," Dean spits, helpless to do anything but promise revenge. He understands his Dad better now, and wishes to God he didn't. "I'll kill you, I swear I will."
The demon doesn't hear him. It doesn't know he's there. "As for you," he says, nudging Benjamin with the toe of his riding boot, "I suppose you deserve a little more honor in your death. I know, I know, I'm a big old softie. Don't let it get around."
Dean can't look away. The shanty's burning, crumbling over his head, the tin roof screeching as it warps from the heat. The heat's roasting him alive. The all-consuming godforsaken stench of charring human remains gags him.
He can see, outside, the yellow-eyed demon kneeling down to dig a shallow hole. He clicks his tongue impatiently and takes off his gloves. There's a silver ring on his finger. Saul's finger. It fits Saul perfectly.
Dean knows that ring.
"You'll grow up sooner than you can imagine," Mary says. "And when you do, this will be yours." She helps him make a fist and holds it for a minute before opening his fingers. "This belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, and his father…"
It's the ring Mom left him, that Dad passed to him, that's on his own finger now, wherever his body lies sleeping.
I can't watch any more of this, I can't. Sam. Sammy, wake me up now. Please, please, wake me up. Sam?
The dream refuses to melt away; Dean can't turn away, no matter how sick with horror.
The demon hums while he digs the shallowest hole possible, using only his hands. Saul's fingernails split and peel back, baptizing the soil with his blood. "From dust you come, and to dust you shall return," he says. "Benjamin, the child of my right hand. Shame. I think it'll be some time before another beautifully fallen angel comes along."
He stands, rubbing Saul's chin. "Well. Perhaps it's a mistake, to breed this way. Times are changing, and women just aren't what they used to be. Goodnight, sweet prince."
The yellow-eyed demon kicks the dirt over Benjamin. The last thing Dean sees of him is his fat baby face, lips still pursed like he's suckling milk.
That's the last Dean can take. He falls to his knees and finds out that even if he doesn't have a body or a stomach in this dream, he can still throw up, or at least dry heave, the taste of bile heavy and bitter and sour tainting his mouth.
On his knees, Dean recognizes the shudder-shake of time sizzling past, timed to the sound of hoof beats receding in the distance. The dark fades to light, the sullen gray sky above promising storms when the clock stills again and Dean stops. Sickly dawn, a red sky at morning.
Dean lifts his head, finding he has hands and knees to feel with again, soaked with frigid dew.
Skinny wolves surround him. They won't attack, though, they've already got what they came for, dragging it away before Dean's eyes.
Behind him, he hears the ghost rise, smells the bitterness of the ashes surrounding her, and hears her first, heartbroken scream for her son.
Gold flares briefly, then gray. Dean's in the middle of the foggy nothing again, black shadows whisking past him, sizzling with anger as they go.
Dean can't do this. He's ill, shaking and exhausted and what he just saw, no one, no one should ever have to see. Ever.
"You remember now, sweet. Joseph." The ghost brushes Dean's face with her cold, cold hand. "Your brother brought this on us."
"I'm not Joseph," Dean tries to say. He has no voice to say it with.
"Dark gold burns," Hannah whispers, riming him with frost. "I'm cold as I can be, to soothe the burn, but it never lasts. You always wither away, sweet…" Her lips touch Dean's cheek. "Always wither, but always come back again. Why did you bring him here? Cruel, so cruel."
Dean shakes his head, wordless. Sam's not like that. You're wrong. I don't know why -- maybe because of Mom, what happened to Mom -- but Dad's not a demon, Sam's not evil --
"I can't see him in here," Hannah murmurs, angry, then placating. "Be safe with me. Help me take care of him. Help me make him go. Until he's dead, we suffer on--"
Dean opens his mouth to rage at her without his voice --
"Dean!" --
And he's opening his eyes to the brightness of the moon overhead through a hole in a rusted tin roof, cold and wet soaking through his jeans and his flannel shirt, ice around him and Sam holding onto him, hanging on tight, babbling his name over and over again. "Dean, God, Dean, you scared me, I tried to wake you up but you fought me this time, Dean, don't you do that again, I was wrong and I'm sorry --"
"Sammy." Dean's voice isn't more than a whisper. "Sammy, stop." He reaches for Sam, his fingers numb from lack of movement or from the cold, Dean doesn't know which. Something compresses Dean's hand; he figures it's Sam.
"I'm sorry," Sam says again, his eyes red and swollen and unashamed. "I was wrong."
"No." Dean licks his dry lips, imagining he can taste tears, ash and blood. "No. You were right."
"Dean, you --"
"Sammy, listen to me." Dean jerks his hand free of Sam's and grabs Sam by the arm. He can see Benjamin's face when he looks at Sam. He gets it, now. He understands so much and he's so much older inside, aching with the weight of this darkness on his shoulders. "You did the right thing. 'Cause now I know how to end it. If you trust me." Dean breathes in, cleansing the smell of burning with the smell of ice and Sam. "If you help me."
Continues here.
(1900 words)
Warnings: Teenchesters (Sam is 16, Dean is 20)
Alternate reality/pre-series.
Rated: Adult (Mild Wincest, natural/supernatural violence, disturbing themes)
Additional warning: This chapter contains extremely graphic violence. Seriously. This is F'd up. Proceed with caution.
Links to previous installments under the cut.
(1) * (2) * (3) * (4) * (5) * (6) * (7) * (8) * (9) * (10) * (11) * (12) * (13) * (14) * (15) * (16) * (17) * (18) * (19) * (20) * (21) * (22) * (23) * (24) *
Twenty-Five
"Son of a bitch, don't you do it," Dean breathes. "Don't you do it."
Does no good to protest. Dean can't stop this from happening. He knows he can't. And he's never seen this before, not with his own eyes, but --
"John Winchester, if you don't pull your head outta your ass I'll snap it off at the neck. Those boys need you," Bobby says.
From where Dean's watching, peeking around the corner and way up, he can see Dad finish off the bottle Uncle Bobby didn't want to give him. He's five years old and he wanted to play with Bobby's old hound dog, but he knows better than to go around the grownups when they have beer.
"You didn't see her, Bobby," Dad says. He sounds like he's had a bad cold, all scratchy. "On the ceiling, cut open, and then fire… it was hellfire, Bobby. I saw it all. You tell me now, how could I ever forget?"
Saul hums a tuneless melody to himself and dandles Benjamin on his knee. Benjamin's too little for that and he squalls like a stuck pig. "Hush, now," Saul says absently, tracking Hannah's progress up the wall. "Up she goes, up she goes. There's a girl."
Hannah's mouth is open too far in her soundless scream. The corners of her mouth have cracked, chapped dry already and bleeding now. Her life's blood drips through Dean, wet and heavy.
Dean wants to look away, but he can't. He's not allowed to. And he won't. This is what she brought Dean here to see. He has to watch all of it. Jesus. He'd asked to see what happened to her. But he didn't this it'd be this. How could he have?
Saul tilts his head and bounces Benjamin up and down like a hobbyhorse. Benjamin's not crying anymore, more making these miserable little squeaks.
"Not everyone gets a chance to say goodbye," Saul -- no, fuck calling him that, that's the name of the man whose body he stole. He's a demon, the demon, the fucking bastard yellow-eyed demon, and Dean can't do a damn thing about it.
"See you around, kid." The yellow-eyed demon blows her a kiss. "Or not."
A gash, ruby red and ragged, slices itself open across Hannah's middle, where she'd have carried Benjamin. Oh, God. It's not like Dean had thought it would be, like he dreaded. It's worse. And he can't look away.
Hannah's mouth closes on the scream, then her lips part, scarlet drops falling from them to patter softly on the dirt floor. She still doesn't make any sound when she speaks, but Dean's staring right at that bloody mouth and he knows exactly what she's said: Joey!
The demon flicks his fingertips at Hannah. Hannah bursts into flames, Hannah burns, and Dean can't stop it.
Benjamin isn't crying anymore.
"Not bad for starters, hmm?" The demon bounces Benjamin one last time before he stands, tucking the baby underneath his arm. Benjamin dangles there, limp, as the demon walks underneath Hannah burning on the ceiling. He reaches up to catch her string of lucky dimes as the cord they're strung on breaks, the coins falling into his gloved hand. "Too bad that old charm against warding off evil doesn't work so well, hmm? Just goes to show you shouldn't put your faith in superstition."
Hannah's eyes snap open. She looks at Dean, directly at Dean, and God knows how, but Dean knows she, the dying woman, sees him as if he's there in the flesh. She mouths another word, one single word. "You."
She might have had more to say. Dean will never know, because that's when the flames cover Hannah completely, burying her inside them. The stink of burning flesh chokes Dean; he gags, spitting bile.
"Suppose you and I should be on our way, shouldn't we?" the demon asks Benjamin, tossing him into the air and catching him, careful of the lintel, ducking his way outside casual as if the whole place isn't coming down around them.
Benjamin's head lolls on his neck. The demon turns, Dean able to see his profile by the firelight, his smirk fading.
Dean realizes that Benjamin's dead at the same time a wave of vicious gladness that he's dead hits. "No. Please, no," a raw voice begs, one Dean almost doesn't recognize as his own.
"That would be my luck," the demon mutters. Dean doesn't know how he can hear it above the roar of the fire and the shanty burning down, but he can. "Shoddy craftsmanship for something supposedly higher than the angels. It's a wonder the race has survived this long. Well. I suppose I have to start again, now. Live and learn, hmm?" He tosses Benjamin up too high, and fails to catch him on the way down, stepping out of the way. "Live and learn."
"I'll kill you," Dean swears, his throat closing up from the inside. He doesn't have a body here to run with, but he tries, he does his best to make a lunge at the demon.
Dean doesn't make it. But running past him, no, through him, a skinny kid does. Joey screams, banshee-loud, throwing himself against the demon's legs and beating at him with his small fists. There's no sense in what Joey's shrieking; it's not really words.
Dean understands them anyway.
"Don't," he tries to say, unsteady, even though he knows Joey won't hear him. "Come on. Don't."
The demon looks down at Joey, annoyed as he'd be at a flea bite.
"No!" Dean yells, too late. The demon's kicked Joey hard as a man Saul's size can. Joey rolls and tumbles into the sweetgrass. He lies still and pale.
"I'll kill you," Dean spits, helpless to do anything but promise revenge. He understands his Dad better now, and wishes to God he didn't. "I'll kill you, I swear I will."
The demon doesn't hear him. It doesn't know he's there. "As for you," he says, nudging Benjamin with the toe of his riding boot, "I suppose you deserve a little more honor in your death. I know, I know, I'm a big old softie. Don't let it get around."
Dean can't look away. The shanty's burning, crumbling over his head, the tin roof screeching as it warps from the heat. The heat's roasting him alive. The all-consuming godforsaken stench of charring human remains gags him.
He can see, outside, the yellow-eyed demon kneeling down to dig a shallow hole. He clicks his tongue impatiently and takes off his gloves. There's a silver ring on his finger. Saul's finger. It fits Saul perfectly.
Dean knows that ring.
"You'll grow up sooner than you can imagine," Mary says. "And when you do, this will be yours." She helps him make a fist and holds it for a minute before opening his fingers. "This belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, and his father…"
It's the ring Mom left him, that Dad passed to him, that's on his own finger now, wherever his body lies sleeping.
I can't watch any more of this, I can't. Sam. Sammy, wake me up now. Please, please, wake me up. Sam?
The dream refuses to melt away; Dean can't turn away, no matter how sick with horror.
The demon hums while he digs the shallowest hole possible, using only his hands. Saul's fingernails split and peel back, baptizing the soil with his blood. "From dust you come, and to dust you shall return," he says. "Benjamin, the child of my right hand. Shame. I think it'll be some time before another beautifully fallen angel comes along."
He stands, rubbing Saul's chin. "Well. Perhaps it's a mistake, to breed this way. Times are changing, and women just aren't what they used to be. Goodnight, sweet prince."
The yellow-eyed demon kicks the dirt over Benjamin. The last thing Dean sees of him is his fat baby face, lips still pursed like he's suckling milk.
That's the last Dean can take. He falls to his knees and finds out that even if he doesn't have a body or a stomach in this dream, he can still throw up, or at least dry heave, the taste of bile heavy and bitter and sour tainting his mouth.
On his knees, Dean recognizes the shudder-shake of time sizzling past, timed to the sound of hoof beats receding in the distance. The dark fades to light, the sullen gray sky above promising storms when the clock stills again and Dean stops. Sickly dawn, a red sky at morning.
Dean lifts his head, finding he has hands and knees to feel with again, soaked with frigid dew.
Skinny wolves surround him. They won't attack, though, they've already got what they came for, dragging it away before Dean's eyes.
Behind him, he hears the ghost rise, smells the bitterness of the ashes surrounding her, and hears her first, heartbroken scream for her son.
Gold flares briefly, then gray. Dean's in the middle of the foggy nothing again, black shadows whisking past him, sizzling with anger as they go.
Dean can't do this. He's ill, shaking and exhausted and what he just saw, no one, no one should ever have to see. Ever.
"You remember now, sweet. Joseph." The ghost brushes Dean's face with her cold, cold hand. "Your brother brought this on us."
"I'm not Joseph," Dean tries to say. He has no voice to say it with.
"Dark gold burns," Hannah whispers, riming him with frost. "I'm cold as I can be, to soothe the burn, but it never lasts. You always wither away, sweet…" Her lips touch Dean's cheek. "Always wither, but always come back again. Why did you bring him here? Cruel, so cruel."
Dean shakes his head, wordless. Sam's not like that. You're wrong. I don't know why -- maybe because of Mom, what happened to Mom -- but Dad's not a demon, Sam's not evil --
"I can't see him in here," Hannah murmurs, angry, then placating. "Be safe with me. Help me take care of him. Help me make him go. Until he's dead, we suffer on--"
Dean opens his mouth to rage at her without his voice --
"Dean!" --
And he's opening his eyes to the brightness of the moon overhead through a hole in a rusted tin roof, cold and wet soaking through his jeans and his flannel shirt, ice around him and Sam holding onto him, hanging on tight, babbling his name over and over again. "Dean, God, Dean, you scared me, I tried to wake you up but you fought me this time, Dean, don't you do that again, I was wrong and I'm sorry --"
"Sammy." Dean's voice isn't more than a whisper. "Sammy, stop." He reaches for Sam, his fingers numb from lack of movement or from the cold, Dean doesn't know which. Something compresses Dean's hand; he figures it's Sam.
"I'm sorry," Sam says again, his eyes red and swollen and unashamed. "I was wrong."
"No." Dean licks his dry lips, imagining he can taste tears, ash and blood. "No. You were right."
"Dean, you --"
"Sammy, listen to me." Dean jerks his hand free of Sam's and grabs Sam by the arm. He can see Benjamin's face when he looks at Sam. He gets it, now. He understands so much and he's so much older inside, aching with the weight of this darkness on his shoulders. "You did the right thing. 'Cause now I know how to end it. If you trust me." Dean breathes in, cleansing the smell of burning with the smell of ice and Sam. "If you help me."
Continues here.