[Fic] One Last Candle (to keep out the light) [2/4]
Title: One last candle (to keep out the light)
Part: 2 out of 4
Author:
youaregonecas
Wordcount: 3.489/7.238 words
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/Gabriel
Tags: letters, depression, major character death, suicide (mentioned), unrequited love, grief, a lot of angst going on, please read at your own risk, season 10 divergent
Summary: Sam Winchester was lost. Lost big time. He once had his brother to help him when he really wasn't in a good place, but now? Now even Dean is gone. With Dean gone and Gabriel gone too, he just doesn't know what to do.
Terrified of his own thoughts, he writes a letter to Gabriel, bringing back memories he hoped he'd never have to face again.
5th of May, 2009
Gabe!
Hi there man. Dean just took my booze away, the heathen. Fucking bastard. You know, after all this time, you’d think we couldn’t get drunk anymore. Well, you guessed wrong. Very wrong in fact. I don’t know.
How long has it been Gabe? Since your jerk of a brother killed you? A few months? I don’t know. I do know that I haven’t slept too much since that night. Dean keeps asking me why I am awake so often. How do you even answer something like that?
He might, I don’t know, think I’m struggling with the apocalypse stuff. Which is true, I guess. That’s there too, but that’s not what is in my nightmares.
You are. Yeah, laugh all you want, I know you’re laughing at me. You see yourself dead and we’ll talk again ‘kay? You know, I kinda miss you…
I miss you a lot. Maybe more than a lot…
Okay. I’ll shut up now. Dean’s looking very pissed right now. It’s funny. Why won’t he and Castiel just hook up or something? Would take tension away from the both of them.
I’m drunker than I thought. Don’t even know when I finished my last bottle to be honest. Or well, the last day that I didn’t long for this. But it is there to hide something else. Something that might damn well be worse than alcohol. The choice between the other thing and alcohol would be so incredibly easy. Actually, probably fast too.
I miss you man
Sam
6th of May, 2009
So I just noticed the other letter. Sorry. I don’t know what it said, can’t have been good. I was so drunk last night.
26th of May, 2009
I’m not as pathetic as you may think. I’ve been better, yes, but I think I’ve been worse too. Dean has been looking at me weirdly for weeks now and I don’t know Gabe, it just starts getting to me. But I’ll be alright, don’t worry about me just, promise me one thing.
That one thing being that you’re still alive. Dean won’t believe me and your brother won’t either. “He’s gone, Sam. When Lucifer killed him, he left”. Morons. You’d be too smart. You ARE too smart to give in to something like this, right? Please tell me that you are. I am begging of you. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
I don’t know if I can handle your death. I don’t know if I can handle it if you too die because of something that I did, because I dared to die. Please tell me that it isn’t true. Please tell me that.
I need you to be okay and I don’t even care if that is selfish. I just, I don’t know Gabe.
30th of April, 2009
Days and nights have been bleeding into one for weeks now, but now? I don’t even realize it when I sleep anymore. Maybe you know that. You probably do. Or well, you might now. After all, you have never been human.
Sometimes, I almost forgot that. That you aren’t or well, weren’t human. You always seemed so sincere before. Not only sincere, but open too, full of emotions sometimes even… I know you probably don’t like hearing that, but it is true.
You may have been an angel/Archangel for such a long time and never human, but you are doing being a human or at least pretending to be one so much better than I am right now. I might as well be a demon for how tainted and bruised I am.
You know about the demon blood. I don’t think you know just how bad it is, how wrong yet, how good if feels. Perhaps even, yes, how addictive that feeling really is. You saw through my façade. I realize that. It was probably hard for you to miss, just how tainted and black my soul has become because of something that I myself did.
I am trying so hard not to let Dean notice, but he probably does. His brother has been… different I guess. Ruby takes up so much of my time now. And don’t get me wrong here, I like her. And, I don’t know man, this is weird, but the sex is great…
If I am honest, I can’t see where my love for Ruby ends and where the addiction begins. I don’t even know if what I feel for Ruby right now actually is love or maybe, nothing at all, not anymore. Yeah, you read that one right. I am Sam Winchester and addicted to demon blood, welcome to AA.
At this point, I am very sure that I don’t love Ruby, not really. She was incredibly good for me, for a while. After Dean died, I got lost along the way. The woods were too dark a place. My mind started wandering and I just, didn’t find the way back. I got lost big time. But all that time, she was there for me. She was my distraction. God knows I needed her back then, but now? I don’t think I need her anymore, all I need is her blood. I no longer want her for the flesh or the person, only for the blood.
And that scared me. Scared the crap out of me if I am honest, but God knows I need it, need it bad. Need it to defeat your jackass of a brother. I’ll get revenge for you, okay? I’ll avenge your death, even if perhaps, you may still be alive. He deserves to be punished for even trying.
I still miss you.
Sam
27th of August, 2009
We’re going through with it. We’re going to do it. I am, at least. I’m going to say yes to your brother. It is the only way I do not break the world more than I already did.
I need to try Gabriel. I need to at least try to get better, I need to try to get your brother into the cage.
I know that once upon a time, I promised you and everyone around me that I would never go through with anything like this, that I would, that I would never say yes to something like this but you know what? I have broken too much, hurt too many people.
Dean has nightmares of Hell and it is because of me. Because he brought me back from the dead. If he hadn’t done that back then, then perhaps, this wouldn’t be happening now. I would be dead, in Hell and Dean would have never gotten the scars.
Without Dean going to hell, you too wouldn’t have come into my life. I am sorry Gabriel, but I caused us both so many problems. It would have been better if you had never met me. If you hadn’t seen the tainted mess that I am, all broken and bruised.
I am duct tape and safety pins inside. Ready to collapse.
Dean tried to dry me out. Cut all of the demon blood out of me, make all the longings go away, but they can’t ever do that. It all hurt so much in those moments, seeing mom sitting next to me and feeling so empty. I even saw myself while I was hallucinating.
It hurt so much in all those moments that even though I know I was begging them to get me out, I knew what I was really asking. In my head, all I could think was; please kill me. Please kill me. How awful of a thought is that? How can a person think that?
I mean, once upon a time, I used to think that people who committed suicide were selfish. Now, I have changed my mind about that, even if it is ever so slightly. They are brave. So incredibly brave.
This will probably my last letter. Maybe one day, you’ll actually read these, but I hope to God that you don’t ever have to. Dean will probably try to get them to you if you are alive. I almost feel like I’m writing a suicide note. Perhaps I am. I might as well be.
Tomorrow or in two days, Lucifer will have me and I will do everything that I can not to let him overpower me. I will fight for whatever it is. But if I don’t succeed in what I planned to do. I am sorry, okay? So incredibly sorry.
All I wanted to do is some good to this world that we already broke. The first seal wouldn’t have been broken if Dean hadn’t gone to Hell for me. It is my fault. All my fault. It makes me nauseous just thinking about how much I screwed up. I screwed up so bad, so incredibly bad.
And again, I am sorry.
If this is my ‘suicide note’, there are some things that I need to confess. Thoughts that I haven’t allowed myself to think for such a long long time. But I am throwing it out there. I am giving in to it now, because I know that otherwise, I will never say those words and you’ll never hear them. I know it may seem something so trivial, so incredibly trivial, but I need you to know.
I love you.
It’s as simple as that. I love you. Have been in love with you for weeks or maybe even months now. And I am tired of hiding it, tired of tucking it away in a dark corner of my mind just because I cannot deal with it, not right now. I need you to know. I need you to know that. And just how much your loss broke me.
It broke me into a thousand tiny little pieces.
Sorry sorry sorry. I am so incredibly sorry
Sam
15th of January, 2011
Hello Gabriel…
It has been quite the while, hasn’t it? I guess that, well, that I am sorry for what I did. I really thought that I could help the people, I really thought that perhaps, I could help them and well, as foolish as it may be, that I could maybe overpower your brother.
I failed. Not completely, it’s true; I got your brother in the cage, but at what cost? Not even just for me, but for the whole population.
I wandered about soulless for almost a year. Dean, he told me about all the things that I did and how I was. They never even noticed that I was soulless… how does a brother do that? How can you see somebody almost every day and have known for so long not even notice that something as vital as a soul was missing. How? HOW?
That’s what I keep asking myself as the wall in my head crumbles. Your brother, he seems to be everywhere now. I can’t even eat without your brother being here, close, being there with a smile on his lips and a remark about something that I did or was planning on doing. I cannot do anything.
And it hurts. Dean keeps telling me, he’s not really there, it all isn’t real. But I feel like it is and it messed me up. It all messed me up so incredibly bad. Oh god.
There’s this wound in the palm of my hand and it hurts like a bitch, but it is the only way that I can do this, that I can keep him at bay. And it doesn’t even work all the time. I wish that it would, but it doesn’t.
Sam
25th of February, 2011
Your brother is the worst.
27th of February, 2011
Like I said before, I cannot deal with your brother. Not full time and not anymore. He has started taunting me with you now. Making me see you broken and bruised, the black outline of wings on the floor. He laughs when I flinch away. I don’t know why. Perhaps because, okay, I don’t know man.
But yesterday, he went overboard. Yesterday, he pretended to be you. Like full on. If dean hadn’t come in when he did and walked straight through you, I wouldn’t have even noticed that it wasn’t real. That it wasn’t really you.
And now, because of him, that sharp pain is back and it is worse. So much worse than it was before. It took me a while before I started thinking of you again. I mean, for over a year, not a single one of my thoughts were about you and then he showed up. And then he showed up and ruined everything.
Your brother is a jerk. I would have… I don’t even know Gabriel.
I miss you
Sam
18th of April, 2012
Dean is gone. He has been for a few months now. I tried writing you this letter so many times now, but I don’t know why, it just never works out the way that I want it to work. There’s a little pile of paper next to me and I know that Amelia is looking at me right now, but I don’t care that much if I am honest.
Yeah. That’s one of the things that I need to talk to you about… Amelia. But first, Dean and Cas by extent.
We were on the hunt for Dick Roman - yes, laugh all you want, trust me, we did too - when it happened. Well, we caught him, if that’s what you want to call it. But, as a price for that, Dean and Cas got sucked in too. They disappeared. And, I don’t know Gabriel, I don’t know why, but I lost my brother again.
I was lost for a while. I tried to find him, but each of my attempts didn’t really work out. I never found him and then, I left. I stopped looking, selfish bastard that I am. I stopped looking for my brother, the only one who has been there for me, always has and probably always will.
I just stopped looking, like he asked me to. Since when do I listen to him? Since when do I listen to my brother when he says to let him go? I shouldn’t, it’s not the thing to do. He wouldn’t, he would keep on fighting.
But he asked me to do so. How could I ignore him Gabe? How could I?
I got lost for a while, but not as bad as last time, not as bad as when I was getting ready to jump into the pit. I am lost, but not completely.
Amelia helped me. Kept me on a right path that doesn’t end in depression or almost dying for a change. It’s a nice change. Amelia isn’t you, but she’s good for me, she can help me. She’s been so kind and loving. She knows that I don’t like talking about it, about what happened to Dean.
She knows that I lost my brother and that I have nightmares, that sometimes, I wake up gasping because the nightmare was so bad that I can’t breathe. She keeps asking me about who you are. She keeps asking me over and over again, and I just don’t know what to tell her. I told her before that you were a friend, that I lost you. I never told her why.
She understands, but her father doesn’t. Don doesn’t like me that much. He sees me as a broken person that will only make things worse, that will make it worse for her. She has been through a lot too. She lost her husband to the war. He was killed in Action. She doesn’t like talking about it either, and I understand. Hell, I understand completely.
The thing is Gabriel, both of us are so broken that I don’t know how long this will stay a good thing, how long it will be before one of us cuts the other person so badly that it just all falls apart. It is what I am afraid of.
Other than that? I am doing… not good, but not bad either. I have been through worse. I have made it through worse. But we’ll have to. We have to get through.
How are you Gabriel? Please tell me that you are okay. Please. I need you to be, I need you to be alive and there…
I don’t know what to do man. I miss you a lot.
Sam
25th of May, 2012
Hello Gabriel,
He came back. I don’t know if you remember about him or not, but Amelia’s husband, he came back. I know, I thought he was killed in action too, but, it appears that he wasn’t. When he showed up, I don’t know whose heart broke worse, hers or mine.
I gave her space and eventually, let her go. He’s her husband. What else could I do? There is nothing, nothing. He deserves to be with her.
Gabriel, I’m broken.
30th of November, 2012
Gabe,
He came back. He came back. Dean isn’t gone. And neither is your brother. They both came back. I just, I figured you should know. That you should know that your brother is safe. I know how relieved I was when he came back.
At first, he was so incredibly lost. You wouldn’t believe it. He came back alone, without Cas. He had to leave him behind in Purgatory.
I know that you still care a lot for him. After all, he was your brother. Is your brother. He still has a brother, you’re still around.
I am okay. I guess. How are you?
Sam
1st of January, 2013
Happy 2013 Gabriel. I don’t even know why I am still writing you, I am sure that you have better things to do than this and well, I think that you’ve probably died… I haven’t heard from you in so, so, so long that it just, it has to be the truth, right?
It is just that, I’d thought or at least, hoped that you’d be back by now. That I’d have heard from you that you would have shown a sign of life. But you didn’t. And that’s okay, really, it is.
Dean has been different lately. He’s just glad that he has Castiel back, even if it isn’t the same as it was before.
Sam
We’ve been doing the trails, everything to lock the doors of hell. Each trial weakens me, makes me less of a man and more of a machine. It’s like stopping Lucifer all over again. The world is falling apart and it is all my fault. Again.
When did all of this become such a burden? When did all of this become so hard to handle?
I need you, Gabe. I need you.
Sam
Gabriel,
Sam is not in a good place at the moment. After the trials, I took him to the hospital. I think, this is all a waste of time, but he’d want you to know I guess.. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept writing you letters, especially not after all those years. He’s in a coma and according to the doctors, he won’t wake up.
I don’t know if I can believe them or not at the moment, they sure do like to give up on people. But, he’s not in a good place at the moment.
You are not my favourite person, but Sam trusts you for some strange reason. I have just stopped asking myself why that is exactly. He thinks that you are still out there and I damn well know that Cas too wants that to be the truth.
So, I guess that you ought to know. If you are there, now would be a good time to show your face. A very good time. Bring your grace with you, if you can find the time.
Dean
Gabriel,
Time has passed, a lot of time even. The trails are over, heaven is boarded up and… I am messed up. Messed up big time, again.
I don’t know if these letters are still helping me and quite frankly, I’m thinking that these letters are making everything worse.
Everything is fucked up, incredibly fucked up. I fucked up. And there is nothing here… nothing.
For years, I clung to this little spark of hope that you were okay, that you were alive but you know what, I tried to believe. I tried to believe in you so damn much, but I couldn’t, not anymore. There is sadness and then there is this and, Gabriel, I just can’t believe in you anymore.
You were always there and now, you aren’t. I am starting to realize that you were never there at all and that all of these letters… they are just a waste of time. You won’t listen. You’ll never listen.
So, this is it. Gabriel, this is it.
G o o d b y e.