Supernatural/The Walking Dead Fanfic: Ashes, Ashes
Title: Ashes, Ashes
Written for: kettle_o_fish's prompt at the ohsam comment fic meme
Characters: Sam, Dean, and Rick, including the rest of the cast of TWD
Word Count: 2,026
Warnings: Character death
Possible Spoilers: Up to the end of season 7 in SPN; up to the Comic-Con trailer for season 3 of TWD. Everything in this fic is pure speculation in relation to spoilers for the upcoming seasons for both shows.
Summary: "Sam once told him that Winchesters were cursed. Now Rick thinks that they weren’t the ones cursed after all."
A/N: This is not a happy fic. This is as depressing as I've ever been. And I'm not sure if it fit perfectly with the prompt, but I hope I did okay!
---
They find the prison a week after the farm burns down. It’s already taken.
Rick’s sure that it’s going to end up being another round of guns and blood and death to humans by humans. Both sides are shouting and threatening each other (and he’s pretty sure he hears one of them hiss), and he swears that someone’s about to take the shot any fucking second, and then the man steps out. He’s tall - very tall, ‘cause Rick is many things, but short ain’t one of them - with longer brown hair and hazel eyes. One of the others, spikey hair with a death glare stronger than all of them combined, tries to pull him back, but the first doesn’t back down. “They’re here, they’re human. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t let them stay, Dean.” Rick is almost surprised by how soft the man’s voice is. He hasn’t heard a soft voice, not even from his wife, in weeks. He’s forgotten that humans can still sound like that.
The man, Dean, grumbles, but slowly lowers his gun. Rick hears him mutter “if you get killed ‘cause of your bleeding heart, Sam, I swear I’ll bring you back just to kill you again.” But when Sam gives Rick a sideways smile, the tension visibly seeps out of everyone else in the yard.
Rick lowers his rifle, and lets himself smile back.
--
It’s a good situation. The prison’s fortified, safe, and despite the stuffiness that comes with being indoors in the late summer of Atlanta, Rick feels better about his lot than he has in a long time. He really shouldn’t, considering that in the first hour living here he’s learned more than he’s ever wanted to know about things that shouldn’t exist. Like the fact that Maria, a thin Latino woman from Sam and Dean’s group, is a vampire. She sported her sharp, shark-like teeth for Carl, who only responded with a muted ‘whoa’. Bryan, a man who seems to be in his late forties, is a shifter, and transformed into a large golden-coated wolf before their eyes.
“We used to hunt their kind,” Dean explains as he tours the group through the building. “But since the dead started rising, we’ve had bigger problems. Post-Apocalypse makes strange bedfellows, I guess. Besides, they’re handy in a pinch.” His face twists a bit, like it’s physically painful to admit that monsters have their uses. “Maria has acquired a taste for zombie flesh, and Bryan can move and kill faster and quieter than any human.”
There’s only one more person in their group. Sam’s wife, a brunette woman named Amelia. “She got pregnant just before this whole thing started,” Sam says, trying for a matter-of-fact tone, but the wistful look on his face gives him away. Dean - his brother, Rick finds out - squeezes the back of his neck, the sort of small, affectionate gesture that he used to share with Shane all the time. He swallows hard at the thought of his ex-partner, and quickly pushes it down with everything else.
Rick’s group settles in quickly, and melds surprisingly well with the Winchester’s group. The chores and duties are divided up equally amongst them, and very little disputes come up, mostly thanks to Sam. Rick can sense that while Dean is the leader, Sam is the peacemaker, and a good one, too. Probably because he’s so goddamn likable. Rick never hears one complaint about the man, and it’s a well-deserved reputation. He’s reassuring, kind without being weak, and has a good heart. He has a whole stack of books that he’s carried with him everywhere, and he offers to read one to Carl. Though the kid responds that ‘that’s for babies’ (and Lori smacks him lightly upside the head, and his son apologizes), Rick’s more grateful than he can say. No one bothers to try to give Carl any semblance of normal anymore. Not even his parents.
Rick trusts Sam the most, though he also trusts Dean to get the job done and keep them safe. ‘sides, Rick gets the feeling that you can’t like one of the brothers without liking the other. The way they walk next to each other with hardly an inch of space between them, the way Dean stands just in front of his little brother when they’re in a remotely dangerous situation, the way they smirk at each other like they’ve just traded a joke with their thoughts - it’s made very clear from the beginning that Sam and Dean are a package deal.
It’s also obvious that they’re the best fighters out of everyone here, except for maybe Daryl. They know what they’re doing, and they’ve been doing it a good thirty years longer than any of them. Glenn lights up like a firecracker when they go around back to see Dean’s car. (His face promptly falls when Dean makes it clear that, walkers or no walkers, nobody drives his fucking car but him.) Rick lights up more at what he sees in the trunk.
Runs are only necessary for food, and they need to go to a town about twenty miles out to get any. They’ve never lost one person on a raid so far. The Winchesters work like a machine, tossing each other guns from across the room as easily as if they’re standing right next to each other. They get the food, they get the walkers, they get out. It’s so beautifully simple, Rick wants to laugh every time they make it back without a scratch. One time, he actually does. Loud and joyous and infectious, the others start to laugh too. Even Daryl cracks a hint of a smile. It feels like years since he’s last laughed, last let himself feel any emotion other than caution and anger. He reaches out to pat Sam on the shoulder, and just fucking laughs, laughs like the world’s been lifted from his shoulders.
They crowd around at night and tell stories. They find a few balls that they can actually toss back and forth in the yard out back. They smile, open and wide like they’ve never seen each-other smile. They keep their guard up for walkers that don’t come. Maggie kisses Glenn, Rick kisses Lori, and Sam kisses Amelia like a man dying in a desert and she’s the only water in sight. Lori and Amelia get bigger and bigger with the lives inside of them. This is as close to happiness as anyone is going to get. And Rick is okay with that.
--
Nothing was simple in this world before it ended. What gives anything the right to stay simple now?
--
Sam’s side starts to hurt. He tries to brush it off, but it doesn’t go away after a few days - it only gets worse. When he just wants to walk from one side of the prison to the other, he often has to stop, kneel down on the floor, his face in his hands, trembling. Dean’s always right there when he does so, his face tight with worry as Rick helps him carry the oversized man back to his bunk. The worry doesn’t elude Rick, either.
Patches on his arms and on his chest grow a sickly yellow. He can’t bring himself to get out of bed except to go take a piss, and he can only do that with Dean’s help. Rick knows there’s something wrong, something terribly wrong, because Sam is kind, but he ain’t soft. He’s a fucking fighter. Everyone in the camp knows it. When he starts coughing up blood on the third week, Hershel finally tries to diagnose him as best as he can.
Liver cancer. Probably has been developing for a while. Curable, but with chemotherapy and IV drips and everything else this world doesn’t have anymore. No matter how many abandoned hospitals they find and raid, nothing left will really help get rid of it. Not even help delay the inevitable.
Dean storms off before Hershel can give the final prognosis. Rick shuts his eyes tight, places his head in his hands, and for the first time since the world went to Hell, it’s impossible for him to listen himself.
--
“Hey, Rick?”
Sam’s outside in the yard, wrapped in about ten layers of blankets that all but bury him he’s lost so much weight, his lips and cheeks white from shaking so hard for so long. They’ve given him as many meds as they can to fight off the abdominal pain, but they only ever make a dent in it. But he wanted to go outside, yellow skin and coughing blood be damned, so Dean brought him. The only reason Dean isn’t within a foot of him right now is because he trusts Rick. He’s still nearby, near the edge of the fence, though, constantly shooting glances back at them. He’s gotten pale these past few weeks, too.
“Can you promise me something?”
Rick nods without hesitation. “Anythin’.”
Sam takes a deep breath. It’s harder for him to talk nowadays. Takes a lot out of him. “Keep an eye on Amelia and my kid?”
Rick thinks about Lori and Carl, of his own unborn child, and the fact that the whole reason it’ll live long enough to be born is the man shivering like leaf next to him. Like the man’s made of wax paper, Rick puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and tries to put some light in his eyes as he smiles. “Of course, man. Of course.”
--
He didn’t need to make that promise.
Sam’s sobs echo through the entire prison. No one sleeps that night. No one feels they have the right to.
--
The weeks fade into months. Winter crawls by. Sam doesn’t leave the room anymore, so Dean doesn’t, either. Rick tries to stay nearby when he’s not guarding the camp, and all he hears through the door is a litany of ‘shhhh Sammy it’s okay I’m here I’m right here don’t you dare fucking die on me not now Sammy please’. Rick finds a lot of excuses the guard the perimeters more often after a while of hearing Dean plead and Sam cry. He hates himself all the more for it.
Hershel says all they can do now is make him comfortable. The last time Rick heard those words, he was eight and his German Sheppard dog was dying. He didn’t understand what comfort those words were supposed to bring back then, and he doesn’t understand now.
People file in and out. Some crying, some not. Even the damn vampire is fighting off tears. (A monster crying over the death of a Winchester. Even Rick can appreciate the irony in that.) When his family goes in, Carl quietly asks if he can read Sam one of those books of his. Through his pale and sickly demeanor, Sam gives the kid the best goddamn smile he can, and says sure. Lori has to leave the room.
Rick never sees Dean not holding onto his little brother those last few weeks. Not once.
As if he thinks that if he never lets go, Sam will have to stay.
--
Sam dies in the early hours of a chilly morning in March. No one is with him but Dean.
--
Both Dean and Sam’s body are missing by just that afternoon. No one knows how he manages to slip past the entire camp, with Sam’s enormous corpse, no less, but he does. When they go to look, the Impala is gone from its usual spot, with a pile of weapons from its trunk lying in its place.
A few miles from the closest town, a fire can barely be seen, back dropped by a fading evening sky. There’s the sound of a muffled gunshot. And then another.
The flames grow just a little bit higher.
---
The first thing Rick sees when they walk into Woodbury a week later is a running, fully-operational hospital. He hears Lori let out a staggered sob behind him.
Sam once told him that Winchesters were cursed. Now Rick thinks that they weren’t the ones cursed after all.
Written for: kettle_o_fish's prompt at the ohsam comment fic meme
Characters: Sam, Dean, and Rick, including the rest of the cast of TWD
Word Count: 2,026
Warnings: Character death
Possible Spoilers: Up to the end of season 7 in SPN; up to the Comic-Con trailer for season 3 of TWD. Everything in this fic is pure speculation in relation to spoilers for the upcoming seasons for both shows.
Summary: "Sam once told him that Winchesters were cursed. Now Rick thinks that they weren’t the ones cursed after all."
A/N: This is not a happy fic. This is as depressing as I've ever been. And I'm not sure if it fit perfectly with the prompt, but I hope I did okay!
---
They find the prison a week after the farm burns down. It’s already taken.
Rick’s sure that it’s going to end up being another round of guns and blood and death to humans by humans. Both sides are shouting and threatening each other (and he’s pretty sure he hears one of them hiss), and he swears that someone’s about to take the shot any fucking second, and then the man steps out. He’s tall - very tall, ‘cause Rick is many things, but short ain’t one of them - with longer brown hair and hazel eyes. One of the others, spikey hair with a death glare stronger than all of them combined, tries to pull him back, but the first doesn’t back down. “They’re here, they’re human. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t let them stay, Dean.” Rick is almost surprised by how soft the man’s voice is. He hasn’t heard a soft voice, not even from his wife, in weeks. He’s forgotten that humans can still sound like that.
The man, Dean, grumbles, but slowly lowers his gun. Rick hears him mutter “if you get killed ‘cause of your bleeding heart, Sam, I swear I’ll bring you back just to kill you again.” But when Sam gives Rick a sideways smile, the tension visibly seeps out of everyone else in the yard.
Rick lowers his rifle, and lets himself smile back.
--
It’s a good situation. The prison’s fortified, safe, and despite the stuffiness that comes with being indoors in the late summer of Atlanta, Rick feels better about his lot than he has in a long time. He really shouldn’t, considering that in the first hour living here he’s learned more than he’s ever wanted to know about things that shouldn’t exist. Like the fact that Maria, a thin Latino woman from Sam and Dean’s group, is a vampire. She sported her sharp, shark-like teeth for Carl, who only responded with a muted ‘whoa’. Bryan, a man who seems to be in his late forties, is a shifter, and transformed into a large golden-coated wolf before their eyes.
“We used to hunt their kind,” Dean explains as he tours the group through the building. “But since the dead started rising, we’ve had bigger problems. Post-Apocalypse makes strange bedfellows, I guess. Besides, they’re handy in a pinch.” His face twists a bit, like it’s physically painful to admit that monsters have their uses. “Maria has acquired a taste for zombie flesh, and Bryan can move and kill faster and quieter than any human.”
There’s only one more person in their group. Sam’s wife, a brunette woman named Amelia. “She got pregnant just before this whole thing started,” Sam says, trying for a matter-of-fact tone, but the wistful look on his face gives him away. Dean - his brother, Rick finds out - squeezes the back of his neck, the sort of small, affectionate gesture that he used to share with Shane all the time. He swallows hard at the thought of his ex-partner, and quickly pushes it down with everything else.
Rick’s group settles in quickly, and melds surprisingly well with the Winchester’s group. The chores and duties are divided up equally amongst them, and very little disputes come up, mostly thanks to Sam. Rick can sense that while Dean is the leader, Sam is the peacemaker, and a good one, too. Probably because he’s so goddamn likable. Rick never hears one complaint about the man, and it’s a well-deserved reputation. He’s reassuring, kind without being weak, and has a good heart. He has a whole stack of books that he’s carried with him everywhere, and he offers to read one to Carl. Though the kid responds that ‘that’s for babies’ (and Lori smacks him lightly upside the head, and his son apologizes), Rick’s more grateful than he can say. No one bothers to try to give Carl any semblance of normal anymore. Not even his parents.
Rick trusts Sam the most, though he also trusts Dean to get the job done and keep them safe. ‘sides, Rick gets the feeling that you can’t like one of the brothers without liking the other. The way they walk next to each other with hardly an inch of space between them, the way Dean stands just in front of his little brother when they’re in a remotely dangerous situation, the way they smirk at each other like they’ve just traded a joke with their thoughts - it’s made very clear from the beginning that Sam and Dean are a package deal.
It’s also obvious that they’re the best fighters out of everyone here, except for maybe Daryl. They know what they’re doing, and they’ve been doing it a good thirty years longer than any of them. Glenn lights up like a firecracker when they go around back to see Dean’s car. (His face promptly falls when Dean makes it clear that, walkers or no walkers, nobody drives his fucking car but him.) Rick lights up more at what he sees in the trunk.
Runs are only necessary for food, and they need to go to a town about twenty miles out to get any. They’ve never lost one person on a raid so far. The Winchesters work like a machine, tossing each other guns from across the room as easily as if they’re standing right next to each other. They get the food, they get the walkers, they get out. It’s so beautifully simple, Rick wants to laugh every time they make it back without a scratch. One time, he actually does. Loud and joyous and infectious, the others start to laugh too. Even Daryl cracks a hint of a smile. It feels like years since he’s last laughed, last let himself feel any emotion other than caution and anger. He reaches out to pat Sam on the shoulder, and just fucking laughs, laughs like the world’s been lifted from his shoulders.
They crowd around at night and tell stories. They find a few balls that they can actually toss back and forth in the yard out back. They smile, open and wide like they’ve never seen each-other smile. They keep their guard up for walkers that don’t come. Maggie kisses Glenn, Rick kisses Lori, and Sam kisses Amelia like a man dying in a desert and she’s the only water in sight. Lori and Amelia get bigger and bigger with the lives inside of them. This is as close to happiness as anyone is going to get. And Rick is okay with that.
--
Nothing was simple in this world before it ended. What gives anything the right to stay simple now?
--
Sam’s side starts to hurt. He tries to brush it off, but it doesn’t go away after a few days - it only gets worse. When he just wants to walk from one side of the prison to the other, he often has to stop, kneel down on the floor, his face in his hands, trembling. Dean’s always right there when he does so, his face tight with worry as Rick helps him carry the oversized man back to his bunk. The worry doesn’t elude Rick, either.
Patches on his arms and on his chest grow a sickly yellow. He can’t bring himself to get out of bed except to go take a piss, and he can only do that with Dean’s help. Rick knows there’s something wrong, something terribly wrong, because Sam is kind, but he ain’t soft. He’s a fucking fighter. Everyone in the camp knows it. When he starts coughing up blood on the third week, Hershel finally tries to diagnose him as best as he can.
Liver cancer. Probably has been developing for a while. Curable, but with chemotherapy and IV drips and everything else this world doesn’t have anymore. No matter how many abandoned hospitals they find and raid, nothing left will really help get rid of it. Not even help delay the inevitable.
Dean storms off before Hershel can give the final prognosis. Rick shuts his eyes tight, places his head in his hands, and for the first time since the world went to Hell, it’s impossible for him to listen himself.
--
“Hey, Rick?”
Sam’s outside in the yard, wrapped in about ten layers of blankets that all but bury him he’s lost so much weight, his lips and cheeks white from shaking so hard for so long. They’ve given him as many meds as they can to fight off the abdominal pain, but they only ever make a dent in it. But he wanted to go outside, yellow skin and coughing blood be damned, so Dean brought him. The only reason Dean isn’t within a foot of him right now is because he trusts Rick. He’s still nearby, near the edge of the fence, though, constantly shooting glances back at them. He’s gotten pale these past few weeks, too.
“Can you promise me something?”
Rick nods without hesitation. “Anythin’.”
Sam takes a deep breath. It’s harder for him to talk nowadays. Takes a lot out of him. “Keep an eye on Amelia and my kid?”
Rick thinks about Lori and Carl, of his own unborn child, and the fact that the whole reason it’ll live long enough to be born is the man shivering like leaf next to him. Like the man’s made of wax paper, Rick puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and tries to put some light in his eyes as he smiles. “Of course, man. Of course.”
--
He didn’t need to make that promise.
Sam’s sobs echo through the entire prison. No one sleeps that night. No one feels they have the right to.
--
The weeks fade into months. Winter crawls by. Sam doesn’t leave the room anymore, so Dean doesn’t, either. Rick tries to stay nearby when he’s not guarding the camp, and all he hears through the door is a litany of ‘shhhh Sammy it’s okay I’m here I’m right here don’t you dare fucking die on me not now Sammy please’. Rick finds a lot of excuses the guard the perimeters more often after a while of hearing Dean plead and Sam cry. He hates himself all the more for it.
Hershel says all they can do now is make him comfortable. The last time Rick heard those words, he was eight and his German Sheppard dog was dying. He didn’t understand what comfort those words were supposed to bring back then, and he doesn’t understand now.
People file in and out. Some crying, some not. Even the damn vampire is fighting off tears. (A monster crying over the death of a Winchester. Even Rick can appreciate the irony in that.) When his family goes in, Carl quietly asks if he can read Sam one of those books of his. Through his pale and sickly demeanor, Sam gives the kid the best goddamn smile he can, and says sure. Lori has to leave the room.
Rick never sees Dean not holding onto his little brother those last few weeks. Not once.
As if he thinks that if he never lets go, Sam will have to stay.
--
Sam dies in the early hours of a chilly morning in March. No one is with him but Dean.
--
Both Dean and Sam’s body are missing by just that afternoon. No one knows how he manages to slip past the entire camp, with Sam’s enormous corpse, no less, but he does. When they go to look, the Impala is gone from its usual spot, with a pile of weapons from its trunk lying in its place.
A few miles from the closest town, a fire can barely be seen, back dropped by a fading evening sky. There’s the sound of a muffled gunshot. And then another.
The flames grow just a little bit higher.
---
The first thing Rick sees when they walk into Woodbury a week later is a running, fully-operational hospital. He hears Lori let out a staggered sob behind him.
Sam once told him that Winchesters were cursed. Now Rick thinks that they weren’t the ones cursed after all.