Eternity
Um?
This was written for de_nugis ' crazy-awesome prompt in the latest comment-fic meme at ohsam: "What if the cage were timeless, or outside of time, and returning to time after being timeless had major repercussions? Physiological, where all Sam's heart rate and breathing rhythms and such were fouled up; psychological, where he no longer knows how to follow a conversation or text or train of thought consecutively without jumping about. Go wild: anything from nausea and dizziness to psychosis. Maybe strong rhythms, like waves or music with a regular beat, help ground him. Or sex, if you wanted to go the pairing route."
This is the result. It's weird, depressing, doesn't really conform to the prompt strictly.
Warnings: SPOILERS till 5.22: Swan Song. Goes AU after that. Self-harm, insanity, blood, weirdness, metaphor-abuse, present-tense.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Eternity
Don't worry about me, Dean.
-there's an insect crawling across his arm. It's a perfectly innocent feeling at first, so Sam just sits and lets it keep going (he's going to flick it off, any moment now) and when it crawls up to the crook of his elbow, it begins to bite and it hurts, so maybe it's time he does something (any moment now), and then it gouges and breaks the skin and crawls underneath, and Sam can feel the pressure and the warmth begin to well just where the insect has entered (any moment now, except he can't move)-
Then the world begins to fall apart.
Large warm restraints clamp over his shoulders and bite into his upper arms, and everything tumbles and blurs into each other as he rocks back and forth. There's noise and warmth in his ear, and the noise is terrible and goes on forever and ever and ever-"Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-"
(focus on me, sam, he would say. i'm so sorry. and there would be pain-all the pain he could fit into one second and one eternity, because there's no difference between the two anymore. when the pain stops, reality bleeds in, and that's the one thing sam doesn't want.)
The insect stops crawling into his veins, and colour and place and time slam back into his head with all the gentleness of a two-tonne sledgehammer to the face. Sam blinks, sees Dean's face inches from his, stretched tight with fear and panic. Dean's got a fork in his hand, and it's dripping with blood. "Sam?" he says, and that's when Sam realises Dean's holding his shoulders, shaking him.
Sam smiles. Don't worry about me, Dean, he says.
There's a peculiar quality about Bobby's voice that Sam's never noticed before. It's annoyingly nasal, rising and dipping, the end of one word flowing into the beginning of the next until it's all just... sound. He stares at the ceiling as Bobby talks, trying to follow but not really, turning and twisting the little amulet in his hand. One of the first things he tried to do after coming back was return Dean's amulet back to him. Dean refused to take it back, though. He just looked sad, pressed the amulet back into Sam's hand, and asked him to keep it safe.
(please, sam would tell him. i don't want this. please put me back on the rack.)
He digs the edges of the amulet into his palm, further and further, until he feels some of the pressure give. And then he presses some more. Bobby's voice keeps getting faster and more incomprehensible until Sam can hear the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears, his heartbeat echoing in his head-thud thud, thud thud, like he's just turned into some gigantic cartoon and his heart is literally preparing to leap out of his chest-
The edges of his vision begin to turn dark, air just barely wisping in and out of his open mouth.
He continues to squeeze the amulet in his palm.
Suddenly the pressure stops. It's Dean again; he's taken the amulet, and Sam feels its absence like Dean just ripped something vital out of his body (and Sam thinks, he's not even using rhetoric, here; he knows exactly how it feels, and the thought makes him want to laugh). The thud thud skips, stutters, and starts again, faster, quieter.
Give it back, he says. Please.
Dean shakes his head. "You're not making any sense, Sam."
Of course I am, Sam says. I can't-I can't face this. Please. Please give it back.
Dean continues shaking his head and casts a helpless look at Bobby, who shrugs in return. "I really don't," Bobby says, and now his voice sounds normal. "I don't understand what he says any better than you do."
(you are mine, sam, he would say when the pain stops/flashes/ends/begins. we are made for each other in ways you cannot possibly understand-you can only know. and sam thinks, he knows it very well.)
I can understand you, Sam says, but he knows he doesn't want to.
Sam can't eat anymore. Not normally, anyway-in those long interminable times he sits on his bed and watches Dean sleep (fitfully, lines of stress and pain bracketing his eyes), he feels whatever he's eaten like a lump of rock sitting in the pit of his stomach. Sometimes he's puking up whatever he's eaten, Dean holding him so that he doesn't face-plant into the toilet bowl. Sometimes he's curled up on bed as every single organ in his body ties itself into knots and the whole world is nothing but the (blessed) pain and the sound of his heartbeat and the cool touch of Dean's fingers across his forehead.
Dean's worried about how thin he's getting. He tries to find something that'll agree with Sam's stomach-tries everything from soup and salt crackers to protein shakes and glucose water. It's not me, Sam tries to tell him. It's the world. Everything's wrong. Moves too fast or too slow.
(the only thing that makes sense any more is pain. it was the only thing he was willing to face for two hundred years.)
After a while, he stops trying to make Dean understand, and lets the world lurch and shift all around him. He just needs his amulet.
(in the cage, it's different. there is no beginning here, nor is there an end: it just is. sam has no idea how long he spent there: maybe no more than a few seconds; maybe more than a hundred lifetimes. he doesn't know. he doesn't care, because there would be pain, clean and pure and simple, and it drives out the need to be able to perceive the passage of time. it's a drug.
when the pain disappears and he lies mending, he sees the true horror of what he's done. he sees what he rules over-because that is what he is, because there's no difference now, they're both the same person-and he despairs. he thinks of dean and his dad and jessica and what he could've become, and the despair deepens until it's resentment, and the resentment billows until it's anger, and the anger burns until it's hollowed him out, and the passage of every second feels like how eternity is supposed to feel.
twenty years for every breath, the stench of every damned soul left to rot here settling in his lungs until they're a part of him. fifty years for every tear that slides down his face, drips from his chin and splatters against his neck. a hundred for every blink, as every part of his cage of rotting flesh and endless horror is burned indelibly into the back of his eyes.
two hundred before he just wants the pain again.)
Dean hides the weapons from Sam now. He locks them in the trunk of the Impala and locks the door of the motel room when he's sleeping, but for some reason, he never tries to snatch away the amulet. Sam doesn't ask why. He's just grateful.
There's a day when Dean stumbles into the motel room, reeking of alcohol and state cigarette smoke. Sam only watches as his brother half-tumbles into bed, kicks off his boots, and mumbles incoherently as he tries to get comfortable.
Something falls out of one the boots, glittering even in the dull electric light. It's one of Dean's knives, Sam knows. The one he keeps stashed away in his boot for emergencies, although Sam can't really remember a time he ever used it.
He's not even aware of moving; in the space between closing and opening his eyes, he's picked up the little knife and set it to his elbow. The world slows down and his heart rises to his throat as the blade breaks skin and blood wells to the surface. Blackness is already eating at the edges of his vision and he's beginning to feel dizzier than ever, but-those things don't really matter-
Dean's hand closes over his, stops the knife from going any deeper, but doesn't remove it. "Sam," he says, settling down behind him, pulling him to his chest. "Sam, listen to me," Dean says against his ear, smelling of cheap whiskey and the only kind of grief Sam's ever known from him in his life. "Just... listen."
And so Sam listens. He listens to the steady thud-thud of Dean's heart, not the stuttering rhythm in his own ears; he listens to the rush of Dean's breath against his ear, feels it tickling the sensitive skin.
(and there was no time. a second and an eternity-they didn't matter.)
"Breathe with me," Dean says. "Try and sleep."
Dean keeps the steady pressure on the knife, and Sam falls to the lull of Dean's life in his ears and the pain.
Thud-thud, thud-thud.
Finis