SPN Fic: Because We're All Dead In Here
Title:Because We're All Dead In Here
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sarah Blake, Sam Winchester, Kevin Tran
Summary: After her death, Sarah Blake finds herself drifting. She's not alone in that.
Warning: vague spoilers for episode 10:01
Word count: 2067
Note: For my
genprompt_bingo card Prompt: Poetry
On her daughter’s first birthday Sarah Blake watches through the veil as everyone smiles and tries to be cheerful. She sees thin lines beside their mouths, the tension in their shoulders, hears it in the whispered words spoken just out of earshot. The pity in everyone’s eyes as they look at the birthday girl. The way uncle’s hand finds her aunt’s, wordlessly, in the back of the room. Her little girl is too young to understand the significance of this day but she knows that it’s special, and that it’s all about her. Sarah watches her cry, because she is too young to understand why Mommy isn’t here for it. She is too young to retain any of the memories she has of her Mommy when she’s older.
She has barely even learned to say the word and already it has become meaningless.
Sarah watches as her husband leaves the room with a smile and an excuse and sneaks to the kitchen where he spends seven minutes with his face buries in his hands. She has learned to see through the veil but she never learned to pierce it. She cannot hold her daughter in her arms and explain to her that Mommy is never coming home.
-
Existence is like glimpses between dreams. Sarah doesn’t understand how time passes or if it does. Her child doesn’t seem to grow at all. Sometimes her girl laughs and then looks like she was caught doing something wrong. Sometimes her husband smiles like it’s not a hardship.
She wonders if she will see him fall in love again, wonders how it will make her feel. She wants to believe she will be happy for him but she can’t tell. Everything is so raw in here, and she is so very alone.
Soon, her girl will have forgotten her face. Maybe someone else will take her place. Maybe her daughter will feel guilty for loving another woman as her mother when she is old enough to understand but probably not. She shouldn’t. Sarah wants to believe that even if they find happiness without her she will always be a part of her family’s life, but that’s not true. She will always be a part of their past. For her daughter, she will be a shadow, lingering in their halls.
Sometimes she gets angry, and that’s how she knows she has to go. She wants to be a good memory, a well-loved story to tell, not a thing that howls and rages and cries in the night. They will let her go. She has to let them go. They have each other, all of them - friends, family, warm hands and videotapes and fond smiles through tears. Sarah has only herself and she walks into nothing.
-
She doesn’t know if she exists in the time that passes between one place and another, in the space between moments. Maybe she is drawn somewhere, but it’s neither Heaven nor Hell. You should be in Heaven, Sam tells her later. You should be at peace. He tells her about reapers and how she should have been taken along, but while he can’t explain why she is here, he doesn’t seem to be surprised. Disappointed, perhaps. Sad. Maybe guilty.
Sarah thinks she ought to be angry with him. Blame him for her fate. But he didn’t kill her, and she’s not angry. Not at him. She’s not sorry either. She’s just happy she’s no longer alone.
-
They seem drawn to people they love, but neither of them wants to go there. Sarah doesn’t want to be a shadow. Sam never tells her what it is he doesn’t want to be. When they hold hands, like scared children in the dark, they can go anywhere they want.
-
If you go without me you might be able to leave here, Sam suggests one time, when the veil is thick and impenetrable and they barely even exist. You could reach Heaven, you just need to go there. But maybe going without him just means that she will still be nowhere, only she’ll be all alone. She doesn’t say anything because all her words feel like curses but she holds his hands in hers very tightly and shakes her head. He just accepts it like he seems to accept everything else. She never understands how he can seems so much more whole than her when he is so broken there’s hardly anything left. Like a cloud of ashes, holding a shape for a little while.
-
Sam died horribly. He doesn’t say that and doesn’t seem to care much, but Sarah knows. She heard his pain echo through the world until it became a part of it. She thinks the whole cosmos must have noted, and Sam admits, that one time he acknowledges her question, that that was the point, that someone, one single person, in the world was supposed to notice.
Your brother, she realises, because it isn’t hard to guess when she knows there hasn’t been anyone else who might have cared. She thinks of Dean and his determination to see his little brother be happy for a few moments, back when they first met. So long ago. Her heart breaks for him and a part of her is glad that it still can. He must have been so mad. So broken. He loved you so much. She thinks about her daughter and how she would have felt if she had been hurt because of her. If Sarah had tried to save her and failed. And the rage is back again, making her glad she is here, far, far away. I hope he made them pay!
Sam doesn’t say anything in return. He just sort of smiles in a way that doesn’t look like a smile at all and doesn’t look at her for what must be several lifetimes.
-
They meet a boy named Kevin one day. He knows Sam, and Sam knows him, enough to hug him and show something on his face that seems genuine. Sarah hates the boy for a moment because this is where she gets left behind but Sam never lets go of her hand and somehow he still feels warm and solid to her touch. It’s her own palm that feels like smoke.
Kevin knew Sam during the time that turned him into what he is. Sarah only knew him for what used to be. The Sam she knows is not the Sam Kevin knows and neither of those Sams is with them now. Sarah and Kevin don’t know each other. They are strangers, holding on to the only thing they’ve got, and that is barely anything at all.
The veil has become thick again, Kevin tells them. Much ticker than it was. He can’t find his way, he says. He lost his mother, but he’s determined to find her again. He has no interest into going anywhere else.
Sarah would like to be at peace, now. She wants to go home. She wants to rest, and not feels like she’s something the world left behind. She hopes that if she keeps on walking, the road will take her where she needs to be. Them. All of them. She doesn’t want to be alone.
She doesn’t know where Sam wants to go, or if he is going anywhere except away.
-
They find a meadow, or maybe an old graveyard, long overgrown. Kevin’s mother is not there and it’s not peace, but it’s something. The place holds no significance to her; maybe to none of them. They stand there, close enough to touch without touching, and watch the unfelt wind move the grass on collapsed graves. Maybe they are buried here, where buried here hundreds of years ago.
They stand in silence, until Kevin says, Sam. And Sam doesn’t react when Kevin takes hold of his arm and asks, Did Dean kill you?
Sarah thinks the question is stupid. Infuriating even. She wants to get angry on Dean’s behalf but for once her anger is murdered by the endless number of seconds that go by before Sam says no.
-
It wasn’t their graveyard. Neither of them has been buried there for a hundred years or more, because when they see the world again, with the sun in their faces and the smell of blood saturating the air it’s a Friday in front of an old barn in Arizona and none of them have been dead from more than three years. Kevin is gone because he sometimes is but he always finds them again. Sarah is clinging to Sam in a mix of fascination and horror and Dean is sharpening a knife, slowly and deliberately, in the view of a man bleeding on the ground before him, saying, “I always keep my promises.”
Sarah knows, then, without a doubt that this is the man who killed her Sam, who made him scream like that. He’s here, right before them, getting what’s coming for him, like her own murderer never did. But Sam just turns around and walks away, and she can only follow or be left behind.
We found your Dean, she points out, like he didn’t notice. And he found your murderer. We must be here for a reason. This is your chance to maybe reach him. Your brother, Sam. Why are you leaving? Kevin will find us. We need to stay! It’s more than she has spoken in forever. Something like words. Maybe they only exist in her memory but Sam got them anyway, those drifting patterns of thoughts, and he shakes his head.
No, he says. (Does he?) I don’t want to see this.
It’s going to be ugly. Sarah was never one to enjoy violence when alive, but then she has never felt such anger. This is justice being served - not for her, but for someone. This is a chance being wasted, and they have so few of them. Maybe only this one. He’s doing it for you, she points out.
No, Sam says again, and already the scene before the barn is much further away then any physical distance they crossed. Sarah thinks of Kevin’s question. She looks back to see if she can find anything like the rage and hatred she feels for that man on Sam’s behalf on Dean’s face (she needs to find it, please, please, let it be there) behind the gleeful anticipation, but he’s kneeling beside Sam’s murderer now, and she can only see his back and the movement of his knife, like a shadow on water.
From far away she hears his voice. “Did you think killing me would bring back your brother?”
And from an even further distance, she hears a wet rasp and the words, “Do you think killing me will bring back yours?”
Dean’s reply is lost to the fog. She hears his laughter, though, and it seems to linger and follow them and it sounds like a kid at Christmas.
-
Time passes or it doesn’t. They rarely leave the veil, as if they couldn’t. Sometimes there are others, like ships passing in the night, distant and vast. Sometimes they find the world, or the world finds them. Sometimes Sarah sees a girl in a garden, a teenager in a crowd, and wonders if it’s hers. They are blonde or brunette, short or tall, pale or dark skinned. It doesn’t matter. She’ll never know. She is a picture on a wall somewhere, a wistful “What if”. Kevin is a memory and rage, a book full of baby photos, a row of awards hanging on a wall and a hopeful look around. She doesn’t know what Sam is.
“My name is Sarah Blake,” she sometimes says in the quiet moments, when they are so alone that their voices are ringing through the world. “I have a daughter.” She doesn’t always remember her daughter’s name, but she knows it must be something that rhymes with Love, or Loss, or Hello. Welcome to this world. Goodbye. She was married to a man named after the act of staring at someone’s picture for so long you forget what they looked like.
“My name is Kevin Tran,” Kevin will always answer. “I have a mother. Her name is Linda and she deserves better.”
Sam never says anything at times like this. Not even his name.
10 October 2014
Also available on AO3.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sarah Blake, Sam Winchester, Kevin Tran
Summary: After her death, Sarah Blake finds herself drifting. She's not alone in that.
Warning: vague spoilers for episode 10:01
Word count: 2067
Note: For my
genprompt_bingo card Prompt: Poetry
On her daughter’s first birthday Sarah Blake watches through the veil as everyone smiles and tries to be cheerful. She sees thin lines beside their mouths, the tension in their shoulders, hears it in the whispered words spoken just out of earshot. The pity in everyone’s eyes as they look at the birthday girl. The way uncle’s hand finds her aunt’s, wordlessly, in the back of the room. Her little girl is too young to understand the significance of this day but she knows that it’s special, and that it’s all about her. Sarah watches her cry, because she is too young to understand why Mommy isn’t here for it. She is too young to retain any of the memories she has of her Mommy when she’s older.
She has barely even learned to say the word and already it has become meaningless.
Sarah watches as her husband leaves the room with a smile and an excuse and sneaks to the kitchen where he spends seven minutes with his face buries in his hands. She has learned to see through the veil but she never learned to pierce it. She cannot hold her daughter in her arms and explain to her that Mommy is never coming home.
-
Existence is like glimpses between dreams. Sarah doesn’t understand how time passes or if it does. Her child doesn’t seem to grow at all. Sometimes her girl laughs and then looks like she was caught doing something wrong. Sometimes her husband smiles like it’s not a hardship.
She wonders if she will see him fall in love again, wonders how it will make her feel. She wants to believe she will be happy for him but she can’t tell. Everything is so raw in here, and she is so very alone.
Soon, her girl will have forgotten her face. Maybe someone else will take her place. Maybe her daughter will feel guilty for loving another woman as her mother when she is old enough to understand but probably not. She shouldn’t. Sarah wants to believe that even if they find happiness without her she will always be a part of her family’s life, but that’s not true. She will always be a part of their past. For her daughter, she will be a shadow, lingering in their halls.
Sometimes she gets angry, and that’s how she knows she has to go. She wants to be a good memory, a well-loved story to tell, not a thing that howls and rages and cries in the night. They will let her go. She has to let them go. They have each other, all of them - friends, family, warm hands and videotapes and fond smiles through tears. Sarah has only herself and she walks into nothing.
-
She doesn’t know if she exists in the time that passes between one place and another, in the space between moments. Maybe she is drawn somewhere, but it’s neither Heaven nor Hell. You should be in Heaven, Sam tells her later. You should be at peace. He tells her about reapers and how she should have been taken along, but while he can’t explain why she is here, he doesn’t seem to be surprised. Disappointed, perhaps. Sad. Maybe guilty.
Sarah thinks she ought to be angry with him. Blame him for her fate. But he didn’t kill her, and she’s not angry. Not at him. She’s not sorry either. She’s just happy she’s no longer alone.
-
They seem drawn to people they love, but neither of them wants to go there. Sarah doesn’t want to be a shadow. Sam never tells her what it is he doesn’t want to be. When they hold hands, like scared children in the dark, they can go anywhere they want.
-
If you go without me you might be able to leave here, Sam suggests one time, when the veil is thick and impenetrable and they barely even exist. You could reach Heaven, you just need to go there. But maybe going without him just means that she will still be nowhere, only she’ll be all alone. She doesn’t say anything because all her words feel like curses but she holds his hands in hers very tightly and shakes her head. He just accepts it like he seems to accept everything else. She never understands how he can seems so much more whole than her when he is so broken there’s hardly anything left. Like a cloud of ashes, holding a shape for a little while.
-
Sam died horribly. He doesn’t say that and doesn’t seem to care much, but Sarah knows. She heard his pain echo through the world until it became a part of it. She thinks the whole cosmos must have noted, and Sam admits, that one time he acknowledges her question, that that was the point, that someone, one single person, in the world was supposed to notice.
Your brother, she realises, because it isn’t hard to guess when she knows there hasn’t been anyone else who might have cared. She thinks of Dean and his determination to see his little brother be happy for a few moments, back when they first met. So long ago. Her heart breaks for him and a part of her is glad that it still can. He must have been so mad. So broken. He loved you so much. She thinks about her daughter and how she would have felt if she had been hurt because of her. If Sarah had tried to save her and failed. And the rage is back again, making her glad she is here, far, far away. I hope he made them pay!
Sam doesn’t say anything in return. He just sort of smiles in a way that doesn’t look like a smile at all and doesn’t look at her for what must be several lifetimes.
-
They meet a boy named Kevin one day. He knows Sam, and Sam knows him, enough to hug him and show something on his face that seems genuine. Sarah hates the boy for a moment because this is where she gets left behind but Sam never lets go of her hand and somehow he still feels warm and solid to her touch. It’s her own palm that feels like smoke.
Kevin knew Sam during the time that turned him into what he is. Sarah only knew him for what used to be. The Sam she knows is not the Sam Kevin knows and neither of those Sams is with them now. Sarah and Kevin don’t know each other. They are strangers, holding on to the only thing they’ve got, and that is barely anything at all.
The veil has become thick again, Kevin tells them. Much ticker than it was. He can’t find his way, he says. He lost his mother, but he’s determined to find her again. He has no interest into going anywhere else.
Sarah would like to be at peace, now. She wants to go home. She wants to rest, and not feels like she’s something the world left behind. She hopes that if she keeps on walking, the road will take her where she needs to be. Them. All of them. She doesn’t want to be alone.
She doesn’t know where Sam wants to go, or if he is going anywhere except away.
-
They find a meadow, or maybe an old graveyard, long overgrown. Kevin’s mother is not there and it’s not peace, but it’s something. The place holds no significance to her; maybe to none of them. They stand there, close enough to touch without touching, and watch the unfelt wind move the grass on collapsed graves. Maybe they are buried here, where buried here hundreds of years ago.
They stand in silence, until Kevin says, Sam. And Sam doesn’t react when Kevin takes hold of his arm and asks, Did Dean kill you?
Sarah thinks the question is stupid. Infuriating even. She wants to get angry on Dean’s behalf but for once her anger is murdered by the endless number of seconds that go by before Sam says no.
-
It wasn’t their graveyard. Neither of them has been buried there for a hundred years or more, because when they see the world again, with the sun in their faces and the smell of blood saturating the air it’s a Friday in front of an old barn in Arizona and none of them have been dead from more than three years. Kevin is gone because he sometimes is but he always finds them again. Sarah is clinging to Sam in a mix of fascination and horror and Dean is sharpening a knife, slowly and deliberately, in the view of a man bleeding on the ground before him, saying, “I always keep my promises.”
Sarah knows, then, without a doubt that this is the man who killed her Sam, who made him scream like that. He’s here, right before them, getting what’s coming for him, like her own murderer never did. But Sam just turns around and walks away, and she can only follow or be left behind.
We found your Dean, she points out, like he didn’t notice. And he found your murderer. We must be here for a reason. This is your chance to maybe reach him. Your brother, Sam. Why are you leaving? Kevin will find us. We need to stay! It’s more than she has spoken in forever. Something like words. Maybe they only exist in her memory but Sam got them anyway, those drifting patterns of thoughts, and he shakes his head.
No, he says. (Does he?) I don’t want to see this.
It’s going to be ugly. Sarah was never one to enjoy violence when alive, but then she has never felt such anger. This is justice being served - not for her, but for someone. This is a chance being wasted, and they have so few of them. Maybe only this one. He’s doing it for you, she points out.
No, Sam says again, and already the scene before the barn is much further away then any physical distance they crossed. Sarah thinks of Kevin’s question. She looks back to see if she can find anything like the rage and hatred she feels for that man on Sam’s behalf on Dean’s face (she needs to find it, please, please, let it be there) behind the gleeful anticipation, but he’s kneeling beside Sam’s murderer now, and she can only see his back and the movement of his knife, like a shadow on water.
From far away she hears his voice. “Did you think killing me would bring back your brother?”
And from an even further distance, she hears a wet rasp and the words, “Do you think killing me will bring back yours?”
Dean’s reply is lost to the fog. She hears his laughter, though, and it seems to linger and follow them and it sounds like a kid at Christmas.
-
Time passes or it doesn’t. They rarely leave the veil, as if they couldn’t. Sometimes there are others, like ships passing in the night, distant and vast. Sometimes they find the world, or the world finds them. Sometimes Sarah sees a girl in a garden, a teenager in a crowd, and wonders if it’s hers. They are blonde or brunette, short or tall, pale or dark skinned. It doesn’t matter. She’ll never know. She is a picture on a wall somewhere, a wistful “What if”. Kevin is a memory and rage, a book full of baby photos, a row of awards hanging on a wall and a hopeful look around. She doesn’t know what Sam is.
“My name is Sarah Blake,” she sometimes says in the quiet moments, when they are so alone that their voices are ringing through the world. “I have a daughter.” She doesn’t always remember her daughter’s name, but she knows it must be something that rhymes with Love, or Loss, or Hello. Welcome to this world. Goodbye. She was married to a man named after the act of staring at someone’s picture for so long you forget what they looked like.
“My name is Kevin Tran,” Kevin will always answer. “I have a mother. Her name is Linda and she deserves better.”
Sam never says anything at times like this. Not even his name.
10 October 2014
Also available on AO3.