If I had died... (genfic mostly, 1422 words, g)
If I had died, I would have never felt sad at all
(genfic mostly, 1422 words, g, AU with Dean dying instead of Jess)
Erm, some throwaway AU angst because clearly work was just too dull for me to actually, y'know, work. The title is from Akira Yamaoka.
The fire changes everything. It changes everything inside Jess because she knows what she saw that night. She remembers bleeding out while splayed across the ceiling. The skin over her belly still feels too thin, as if stretching too far would make her body pop open again. When Sam's fingertips skim over the silvery line of the scar, she has to catch his wrist and move his hand away.
Sam changed in the fire too. Stanford holds no attraction for him now. She's not sure if she holds any attraction for him now, despite the desperate way Sam clings to her in the night. She's precious to him because her life was bought with his brother's. If Sam were to walk away from her now, she thinks, he'd be making Dean's death meaningless. It's not a truth she likes to dwell upon.
So they leave Stanford, leave California. They take Dean's car, a sleek black Impala, and they take up his journey. Jess learns quickly: how to fire a gun, how to dress an injury, how to settle the dead and put down the unnatural. She rides shotgun and stares out the window until the white glare of sunlight burns her eyes.
At first, they go to Sam's father. They do it because it's what Dean would do, what he'd want. John is like Sam, Jess discovers, he's yet another man living out his life on the ghost of a memory. He doesn't like Jess from the start. She's not surprised. How could he possibly like her? She survived a death that took his wife, and in so doing, she took his son. They both try for a while though, for Sam's sake. Jess ignores the way John watches her sometimes, ignores the simmering light of resentment in his eyes. And John teaches her just as he taught Dean, until she's a capable companion for Sam.
It can't last. Even if Jess and John could pretend, Sam can't. Sam is an open wound. He's raw and angry and each shouting match between him and his father only ever ends with the intrusion of Dean's name. Dean silences the argument, but it doesn't end it. After a month, he drags Jess out to the Impala and they disappear along the road that winds into the night. John doesn't even try following them.
Hunting becomes their life, broken up now and again with days when Sam doesn't get out of bed, simply stares blankly at the ceiling, mute tears running down his face. Jess stays with him on those days, she curls about him and holds him, just like she does when he wakes from his hellish nightmares. It's all she can do for him, to be someone alive and warm and there for him. He mouths kisses over the strands of her hair and his fingers bite into her flesh where he grips her close, leaving red prints along her skin.
She thinks sometimes she's losing him. When the visions start, she's out of her depth and she's scared. And it's times like that she thinks of Dean - dragging her out of the flames, his own skin black and cracked - and she hates him for putting her here and for being someone she can't be, the person Sam needs now.
There's a photo of the Winchesters in Sam's wallet. Sam can't be more than six or seven, sitting on the hood of a car with his dad, while Dean slouches up against them, so impossibly bright even then. More than once, Jess has come across Sam with that photo. He'll stare at it like he's seeing layers to it, as if there's so much more in the picture than a weary looking man and his two young sons.
Jess doesn't ask what Sam sees, just as she doesn't ask about Dean. She knows a few things about Dean because sometimes, in a halting voice and out of nowhere, Sam will tell her about his brother. Once, when they were driving away from the smoking corpse of a murdered little girl, Sam had talked about how, when they were kids, a werewolf had torn up Sam's favourite shirt, and Dean had sewn it back together for him. How he'd cussed and sworn and how the needle had pricked his fingertips bloody, but also how he'd grinned so proudly when he handed it back to Sam.
It's the most Sam's ever talked at a time about Dean. Mostly it'll just be a comment here or there, like Dean always preferred handguns to rifles or Dean went to high school there for a term. Jess has learnt not to press for more. She doesn't know what she'd get.
Death has made Dean perfect. Whatever it was Sam could live without when he left for Stanford, death makes it unimportant. A dead man is an unbeatable rival. Even thinking of herself as a rival is silly. No matter how much Jess does or how much she puts up with, Dean is that unattainable perfection. He is the big brother whose approval is forever elusive, whose smiles have become more beautiful for being gone.
And Jess can't even muster the emotion to hate him for it because she remembers the minutes she spent on the ceiling, terrified and waiting for death, believing all too suddenly in the possibility of hell, and she remembers him saving her life. He did it for Sam, she knows that, but still… he didn't know her and yet he died for her. She can't stoop to the ingratitude of hating him, no matter how far from her Sam drifts.
That worry haunts her, that's she's tied into this by duty and gratitude and a college love affair that should have been put to rest months ago.
In a diner just outside of Colorado, a mechanic with a deep laugh and glittering eyes hits on her. Even with her hair scraped off her face and the last colours of a bruise on her jaw, she's beautiful. She stares down at the crumpled receipt he's handed her, the numbers he's scrawled across it meaningless to her for a good long while. It clicks, while he watches her with a hopeful smile, that it's his phone number. She thanks him bemusedly and throws it in the trash on her way out to the Impala. He watches her go, his face darkening as he takes in Sam's grim expression. He looks again at her old bruise, shakes his head.
As they drive, Jess rests her forehead against the glass and lets the sound of Metallica buzz through the air about her. She tries to trace the thread of her response. Is she here because she's responsible for Sam's damaged state? Does she stay because she's afraid Dean's ghost, all angelic reproach, will drag her back if she tries to leave? Is she waiting for Sam to fall out of love with his dead brother and remember her?
The horror of not knowing why she's doing all this roils inside her stomach until she thinks she's going to be sick. Her pallid complexion and the note of urgency in her voice when she asks Sam to pull over don't leave room for anything but compliance. Sam's hand rests lightly on the small of her back as she kneels in the grass and retches.
Afterwards, she sits on the hood of the Impala and trembles. She brings her knees up to her chest and squeezes her eyes shut. Sam sits beside her and stares out across the fields, watching the grass shiver in the breeze. They've been silent for so long it takes Jess a moment to register that Sam's asking her a question.
"Are you cold?" he says.
Better than burning, she wants to say, but only nods.
Nothing happens for a while after that. It wouldn't be the first time Sam's shown some signs of normality only to turn back inside of himself. Then the metal creaks as Sam unfolds himself and walks round to the trunk. Jess is conscious of the loss of the heat of his body against her.
"Here," says Sam.
He drapes an old leather jacket about her shoulders. It's warm and it wraps around her like an embrace. Sam adjusts the collar, his knuckles skimming over her cheeks. Her eyes fall shut against the piercing spike of tears and Sam cradles her head against his chest. She huddles closer and on the dusk air, as the leather moves, she smells smoke.
~end
(genfic mostly, 1422 words, g, AU with Dean dying instead of Jess)
Erm, some throwaway AU angst because clearly work was just too dull for me to actually, y'know, work. The title is from Akira Yamaoka.
The fire changes everything. It changes everything inside Jess because she knows what she saw that night. She remembers bleeding out while splayed across the ceiling. The skin over her belly still feels too thin, as if stretching too far would make her body pop open again. When Sam's fingertips skim over the silvery line of the scar, she has to catch his wrist and move his hand away.
Sam changed in the fire too. Stanford holds no attraction for him now. She's not sure if she holds any attraction for him now, despite the desperate way Sam clings to her in the night. She's precious to him because her life was bought with his brother's. If Sam were to walk away from her now, she thinks, he'd be making Dean's death meaningless. It's not a truth she likes to dwell upon.
So they leave Stanford, leave California. They take Dean's car, a sleek black Impala, and they take up his journey. Jess learns quickly: how to fire a gun, how to dress an injury, how to settle the dead and put down the unnatural. She rides shotgun and stares out the window until the white glare of sunlight burns her eyes.
At first, they go to Sam's father. They do it because it's what Dean would do, what he'd want. John is like Sam, Jess discovers, he's yet another man living out his life on the ghost of a memory. He doesn't like Jess from the start. She's not surprised. How could he possibly like her? She survived a death that took his wife, and in so doing, she took his son. They both try for a while though, for Sam's sake. Jess ignores the way John watches her sometimes, ignores the simmering light of resentment in his eyes. And John teaches her just as he taught Dean, until she's a capable companion for Sam.
It can't last. Even if Jess and John could pretend, Sam can't. Sam is an open wound. He's raw and angry and each shouting match between him and his father only ever ends with the intrusion of Dean's name. Dean silences the argument, but it doesn't end it. After a month, he drags Jess out to the Impala and they disappear along the road that winds into the night. John doesn't even try following them.
Hunting becomes their life, broken up now and again with days when Sam doesn't get out of bed, simply stares blankly at the ceiling, mute tears running down his face. Jess stays with him on those days, she curls about him and holds him, just like she does when he wakes from his hellish nightmares. It's all she can do for him, to be someone alive and warm and there for him. He mouths kisses over the strands of her hair and his fingers bite into her flesh where he grips her close, leaving red prints along her skin.
She thinks sometimes she's losing him. When the visions start, she's out of her depth and she's scared. And it's times like that she thinks of Dean - dragging her out of the flames, his own skin black and cracked - and she hates him for putting her here and for being someone she can't be, the person Sam needs now.
There's a photo of the Winchesters in Sam's wallet. Sam can't be more than six or seven, sitting on the hood of a car with his dad, while Dean slouches up against them, so impossibly bright even then. More than once, Jess has come across Sam with that photo. He'll stare at it like he's seeing layers to it, as if there's so much more in the picture than a weary looking man and his two young sons.
Jess doesn't ask what Sam sees, just as she doesn't ask about Dean. She knows a few things about Dean because sometimes, in a halting voice and out of nowhere, Sam will tell her about his brother. Once, when they were driving away from the smoking corpse of a murdered little girl, Sam had talked about how, when they were kids, a werewolf had torn up Sam's favourite shirt, and Dean had sewn it back together for him. How he'd cussed and sworn and how the needle had pricked his fingertips bloody, but also how he'd grinned so proudly when he handed it back to Sam.
It's the most Sam's ever talked at a time about Dean. Mostly it'll just be a comment here or there, like Dean always preferred handguns to rifles or Dean went to high school there for a term. Jess has learnt not to press for more. She doesn't know what she'd get.
Death has made Dean perfect. Whatever it was Sam could live without when he left for Stanford, death makes it unimportant. A dead man is an unbeatable rival. Even thinking of herself as a rival is silly. No matter how much Jess does or how much she puts up with, Dean is that unattainable perfection. He is the big brother whose approval is forever elusive, whose smiles have become more beautiful for being gone.
And Jess can't even muster the emotion to hate him for it because she remembers the minutes she spent on the ceiling, terrified and waiting for death, believing all too suddenly in the possibility of hell, and she remembers him saving her life. He did it for Sam, she knows that, but still… he didn't know her and yet he died for her. She can't stoop to the ingratitude of hating him, no matter how far from her Sam drifts.
That worry haunts her, that's she's tied into this by duty and gratitude and a college love affair that should have been put to rest months ago.
In a diner just outside of Colorado, a mechanic with a deep laugh and glittering eyes hits on her. Even with her hair scraped off her face and the last colours of a bruise on her jaw, she's beautiful. She stares down at the crumpled receipt he's handed her, the numbers he's scrawled across it meaningless to her for a good long while. It clicks, while he watches her with a hopeful smile, that it's his phone number. She thanks him bemusedly and throws it in the trash on her way out to the Impala. He watches her go, his face darkening as he takes in Sam's grim expression. He looks again at her old bruise, shakes his head.
As they drive, Jess rests her forehead against the glass and lets the sound of Metallica buzz through the air about her. She tries to trace the thread of her response. Is she here because she's responsible for Sam's damaged state? Does she stay because she's afraid Dean's ghost, all angelic reproach, will drag her back if she tries to leave? Is she waiting for Sam to fall out of love with his dead brother and remember her?
The horror of not knowing why she's doing all this roils inside her stomach until she thinks she's going to be sick. Her pallid complexion and the note of urgency in her voice when she asks Sam to pull over don't leave room for anything but compliance. Sam's hand rests lightly on the small of her back as she kneels in the grass and retches.
Afterwards, she sits on the hood of the Impala and trembles. She brings her knees up to her chest and squeezes her eyes shut. Sam sits beside her and stares out across the fields, watching the grass shiver in the breeze. They've been silent for so long it takes Jess a moment to register that Sam's asking her a question.
"Are you cold?" he says.
Better than burning, she wants to say, but only nods.
Nothing happens for a while after that. It wouldn't be the first time Sam's shown some signs of normality only to turn back inside of himself. Then the metal creaks as Sam unfolds himself and walks round to the trunk. Jess is conscious of the loss of the heat of his body against her.
"Here," says Sam.
He drapes an old leather jacket about her shoulders. It's warm and it wraps around her like an embrace. Sam adjusts the collar, his knuckles skimming over her cheeks. Her eyes fall shut against the piercing spike of tears and Sam cradles her head against his chest. She huddles closer and on the dusk air, as the leather moves, she smells smoke.
~end