10x23 ficlet
Just posting this little thing (450 words) I wrote after my Tumblr friend made a rather macabre observation about 10x23. Warnings for body horror, I guess? (I don't have a title for it: I'm open to suggestions!)
Dean hefts the scythe in his hand, big and heavy with the blade sticking out at an awkward angle. He swings it back, and Sam tenses despite himself, tries to keep his face neutral, tries not to let the fear through in case Dean stutters and fuck, about the only thing he’s counting on right now is that it’s going to be quick. Sam’s made peace with dying - probably - he thinks. He thought he’d made peace with it years ago, has made that choice over and over and so it’s not too difficult to slip back into the state of mind where it feels necessary and better and right. It’s just. He can’t help the tiny qualm of anxiety in his stomach about what comes after. Where might he go? It’s hard not to worry that the slash of the blade won’t be followed by the chill, high laugh that still sends shivers up Sam’s spine in his sleep.
Fuck, though, he’s made that choice before, made it for Dean and for the world, and if things seem foggier now and less certain then that’s probably his mistake more than anything else. But he’s here, anyway, isn’t he, here with his chin held high and his neck long and his eyes on his brother as he prays for Dean to do it sharp and swiftly and sever this twisted thing between them, again. He’s ready and trembling for the slaughter, for the bright flash of pain.
So when Dean misses, or something, whistles the scythe right over Sam’s head and buries it hilt-deep in Death, Sam honestly thinks for a second that he’s dead; or rather, that he’s in the last blink of life, the seconds before his split spinal cord slips sideways and his consciousness is cut off forever. It happens, doesn’t it? Decapitated chickens dance drunken around the yard; the severed heads of the executed blink, or laugh, before death. If you’ve read the number of urban legends that Sam’s encountered, you’d think it happened all the time. It’s a long, sick, disorienting moment before he realises that Dean hasn’t done it, hasn’t actually cut off his head; before he recognises that neither pain nor release will be coming today.
The shock of it makes him dizzy, but the world keeps moving. Death dissolves in front of him into a powdery pile of sand; Dean turns back to him with eyes white-rimmed and enormous in fear. Dean needs him. And so Sam pulls the shaky, separate parts of himself back together, hauling himself upright on his brother’s hand.
“You okay?” Dean asks.
Sam wants to laugh, or cry. Instead, “I’ll live,” he says. It’s true, for now.