Supernatural fic: Tracks 1/1 [PG] Sam - 5.22 to 6.01 bridge & coda
Title: Tracks
Rating: PG for disturbing imagery
Characters: Sam
Notes/Disclaimers: Coda to 6.01. Bridge between 5.22 and 6.01
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.01
I don't know what is behind Sam's quiet. But something is.
I know everyone else is doing these. Now so am I. ;P
09/28/10 08:39:25 PM
Tracks
The pressure... the pressure was immense. It should have snuffed his life out instantly but the blood pumping through his veins had armored him, oh, not enough to save him, but enough to make his death an agony of millenniums, forcing his teeth down his throat, bursting his eyeballs, mashing shards of skull through his brain and splinters of rib dicing his lungs and heart, a stupid heart that still tried to beat in its unnaturally fortified state.
It was the pressure that made the heat - enough heat to turn every solid thing molten and then boil it to gas, or would have, had not the pressure kept it in a state of plasma.
The heat was beyond white-hot but without eyes to be blinded it didn't matter so much. Demon blood boiled along with everything else.
There weren't words, really, but afterward, he remembered it as words, because having another mind communicate by thinking your thoughts was beyond horrible.
You won fair and square, Sammy. I never thought you would. It has to be a trick, but I can't see the trick. I need to see the trick, Sammy. You can't hide anything from me you know. You never could. It makes no sense that something like you could defeat something like me... you have to show me how you did it. You have to, Sam.
It was impossible to resist while Satan thought your own thoughts at you, but he tried.
He didn't know if he broke slower than Dean, or quicker. He only knew that when it happened, Lucifer plucked out each and every precious memory to examine it, dissect it, turn it inside out and himself along with it, looking for the trick, the meaning, the power. But Lucifer was incapable of seeing it.
Like a child with a powerless insect that had bitten him, Lucifer pulled Sam apart, memory by memory, bit by bit, looking for what had defeated him.
The rain was cold.
Cold was such an inconceivable sensation and yet it wasn't, Lucifer had burned cold inside him, so cold that he had been preserved when he should have been obliterated, when it would have been mercy.
The lightning was jagged, eye-hurting, and close, and the thunder shook both the air and the ground. He was already stunned senseless.
It was animal impulse, finally, to curl into a fetal ball.
He didn't quite crawl his way towards Cicero from Lawrence. He was there before - was it days or weeks? - he had a real grasp on what Lawrence was, or Cicero, or days, or weeks.
He stood under the streetlight for a long time - was it hours or seconds? - watching shapes move in ways that were almost familiar. One shape in particular... it hurt, but the hurt felt, in a way that nothing else had for as long as he could remember.
He didn't understand the impulse that drew him towards the light, because until then, he'd been flinching from it.
When some torn shred of memory, drained of all its color and richness, flickered long enough to show him why he was drawn, he stopped. The shape in the light beyond the window glass looked... was that what happy looked like?
He couldn't remember.
But it wasn't worth the risk. That much he knew, that much he thought he knew.
So much better off without you, Sammy you monster.
When the Morning Star thought at you with your own thoughts, he left tracks.
Better without him.
When Samuel found him he was walking, and talking, though not a lot of the latter. That didn't seem to matter, Samuel was good at filling in the blank spaces. He said smart things, and shaped familiar words. Family. That was important. He knew it was important, even if the shape of why was warped by the cage. The cage in the pit.
Bobby looked at him a little sharply sometimes, watched him, when he came around. He didn't come around very much though. The others watched him, they all watched him. Samuel watched him. Samuel somehow knew he'd come up from Hell, but never a word was said about it. Never a hint of condemnation.
They just... watched him.
He didn't blame them.
We were, quite literally, made for each other...
You're a monster, Lucifer...
Sam.
Those tracks... it wasn't always possible to tell when they were his, and when they were not.
He found a small piece of himself in hunting. He didn't have to tell anyone that when he used a machete, made and shot salt rounds, defended himself with silver, that shreds and ghosts of memories fluttered around him, too thin to grasp but precious all the same. Memories of someone teaching him. Showing him. Always backing him up.
He must have been meant to do this. It was the only time those echoes thickened to a pulse of near reality.
“We need to bring Dean in on this...” Samuel had a persuasive side too.
But he wouldn't hear of it. His refusal was short and soft and adamant and whatever Samuel saw in his eyes, he didn't push it.
No way he could explain to Samuel that Dean was better off, that the worst thing about memories of beating Dean's face to a pulp with his own hands was that he couldn't feel anymore when he'd taken over. And why... his mind knew it in words, but it had all been picked apart by an archangel, from the inside.
He could have just said, because I'm a monster, but he didn't.
He didn't want to be alone.
The words were off, and his cadences weren't right but he watched Dean wake like he was waiting for his brother's presence to breathe life back into his clay.
Or for Dean to snarl and reject him.
Little by little the pain in Dean pulled at him, scratched at him.
It was as addictive as demon blood.
He knew it was wrong to want Dean to leave his new life and family. For a little while it looked like it might happen without him asking. But Dean was better than that.
Better than you're a monster Sam.
But he struck chords that Samuel and cousins Campbell never could. Never would.
“It's better with you, Dean.”
He finally started to feel the shape of what was wrong. It was almost like having hope.
~
09/28/10 09:52:38 PM
Rating: PG for disturbing imagery
Characters: Sam
Notes/Disclaimers: Coda to 6.01. Bridge between 5.22 and 6.01
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.01
I don't know what is behind Sam's quiet. But something is.
I know everyone else is doing these. Now so am I. ;P
09/28/10 08:39:25 PM
Tracks
The pressure... the pressure was immense. It should have snuffed his life out instantly but the blood pumping through his veins had armored him, oh, not enough to save him, but enough to make his death an agony of millenniums, forcing his teeth down his throat, bursting his eyeballs, mashing shards of skull through his brain and splinters of rib dicing his lungs and heart, a stupid heart that still tried to beat in its unnaturally fortified state.
It was the pressure that made the heat - enough heat to turn every solid thing molten and then boil it to gas, or would have, had not the pressure kept it in a state of plasma.
The heat was beyond white-hot but without eyes to be blinded it didn't matter so much. Demon blood boiled along with everything else.
There weren't words, really, but afterward, he remembered it as words, because having another mind communicate by thinking your thoughts was beyond horrible.
You won fair and square, Sammy. I never thought you would. It has to be a trick, but I can't see the trick. I need to see the trick, Sammy. You can't hide anything from me you know. You never could. It makes no sense that something like you could defeat something like me... you have to show me how you did it. You have to, Sam.
It was impossible to resist while Satan thought your own thoughts at you, but he tried.
He didn't know if he broke slower than Dean, or quicker. He only knew that when it happened, Lucifer plucked out each and every precious memory to examine it, dissect it, turn it inside out and himself along with it, looking for the trick, the meaning, the power. But Lucifer was incapable of seeing it.
Like a child with a powerless insect that had bitten him, Lucifer pulled Sam apart, memory by memory, bit by bit, looking for what had defeated him.
The rain was cold.
Cold was such an inconceivable sensation and yet it wasn't, Lucifer had burned cold inside him, so cold that he had been preserved when he should have been obliterated, when it would have been mercy.
The lightning was jagged, eye-hurting, and close, and the thunder shook both the air and the ground. He was already stunned senseless.
It was animal impulse, finally, to curl into a fetal ball.
He didn't quite crawl his way towards Cicero from Lawrence. He was there before - was it days or weeks? - he had a real grasp on what Lawrence was, or Cicero, or days, or weeks.
He stood under the streetlight for a long time - was it hours or seconds? - watching shapes move in ways that were almost familiar. One shape in particular... it hurt, but the hurt felt, in a way that nothing else had for as long as he could remember.
He didn't understand the impulse that drew him towards the light, because until then, he'd been flinching from it.
When some torn shred of memory, drained of all its color and richness, flickered long enough to show him why he was drawn, he stopped. The shape in the light beyond the window glass looked... was that what happy looked like?
He couldn't remember.
But it wasn't worth the risk. That much he knew, that much he thought he knew.
So much better off without you, Sammy you monster.
When the Morning Star thought at you with your own thoughts, he left tracks.
Better without him.
When Samuel found him he was walking, and talking, though not a lot of the latter. That didn't seem to matter, Samuel was good at filling in the blank spaces. He said smart things, and shaped familiar words. Family. That was important. He knew it was important, even if the shape of why was warped by the cage. The cage in the pit.
Bobby looked at him a little sharply sometimes, watched him, when he came around. He didn't come around very much though. The others watched him, they all watched him. Samuel watched him. Samuel somehow knew he'd come up from Hell, but never a word was said about it. Never a hint of condemnation.
They just... watched him.
He didn't blame them.
We were, quite literally, made for each other...
You're a monster, Lucifer...
Sam.
Those tracks... it wasn't always possible to tell when they were his, and when they were not.
He found a small piece of himself in hunting. He didn't have to tell anyone that when he used a machete, made and shot salt rounds, defended himself with silver, that shreds and ghosts of memories fluttered around him, too thin to grasp but precious all the same. Memories of someone teaching him. Showing him. Always backing him up.
He must have been meant to do this. It was the only time those echoes thickened to a pulse of near reality.
“We need to bring Dean in on this...” Samuel had a persuasive side too.
But he wouldn't hear of it. His refusal was short and soft and adamant and whatever Samuel saw in his eyes, he didn't push it.
No way he could explain to Samuel that Dean was better off, that the worst thing about memories of beating Dean's face to a pulp with his own hands was that he couldn't feel anymore when he'd taken over. And why... his mind knew it in words, but it had all been picked apart by an archangel, from the inside.
He could have just said, because I'm a monster, but he didn't.
He didn't want to be alone.
The words were off, and his cadences weren't right but he watched Dean wake like he was waiting for his brother's presence to breathe life back into his clay.
Or for Dean to snarl and reject him.
Little by little the pain in Dean pulled at him, scratched at him.
It was as addictive as demon blood.
He knew it was wrong to want Dean to leave his new life and family. For a little while it looked like it might happen without him asking. But Dean was better than that.
Better than you're a monster Sam.
But he struck chords that Samuel and cousins Campbell never could. Never would.
“It's better with you, Dean.”
He finally started to feel the shape of what was wrong. It was almost like having hope.
~
09/28/10 09:52:38 PM