Nothing But Ashes
Nothing But Ashes
Summary: Dean knows the second he picks up the phone. EpilepticSam 'verse.
A/N: Set pretty much immediately after my story Before Tomorrow.
XXX
Fucking coordinates.
It's typical, really. So fucking Dad. Dean spends weeks searching and worrying, not knowing whether his father was alive or dead, and when he finally gets close all he ends up with are fucking coordinates.
The message is pretty clear. Get on with it. Like Dean can just ignore the fact that Dad's still missing and the fact that that clearly means there's something going on that he should probably know about, at the very least. He's holding on to the slim hope that Dad will be in Blackwater Ridge, where the coordinates lead, and will explain everything but he's definitely not counting on it and honestly, he's pretty pissed off about being ordered around by a man who can't even pick up the damn phone.
So he's not getting on with it. In a rare fit of disobedience, he's headed back to Sam's because screw Dad and screw his secrets. It's November fucking second and the Impala doesn't feel as much like home as Sam does. He dealt with Dad's abandoned case (that Constance, what a bitch), he deserves one damn night - this night - with Sam before taking off on another lonely hunt.
He's hardly surprised when his phone lights up on the seat beside him, Sam's name flashing across the screen. It's late but, like he said, November 2nd, so. He turns off the radio, reaches over to hit speaker phone and is already halfway through “You better not be in hospital, bitch” before his brain registers the sirens, the way Sam is screaming in the background in a way Dean has never heard him scream, and his voice breaks off as terror hits him like a fist to the face. It's November 2nd.
“Jess?” he asks urgently, because someone's breathing into the phone and please, please let it be her, please let it be her-
“No,” a voice answers, male and shell-shocked. “No, it's Brady. Is... is this Dean?”
“Brady, what's going on?” Dean demands, his voice loud in the silence of the car so that Brady can hear him over what sounds like half a dozen fire trucks wailing on his end. Baby puts on a burst of speed like it's her idea and Dean has to wait while Brady muffles a fit of coughing, and by the time he answers, Dean doesn't need him to.
“There was a fire. Sam's apartment... I don't know what happened...”
Dean knows what happened. He feels the truth of it hanging heavy and final through the phone lines. When Sam suddenly falls silent in the background, he doesn't need Brady to tell him that the kid's having a seizure, either.
“Is Sam okay?” Sam's not okay. “Did the fire-” Dean swallows. “Is he burnt?”
“I don't... No, I got him out before...” The sirens scream on and on. Dean's head is spinning and he needs to concentrate but it's November 2nd. “They're putting him in the ambulance now,” Brady continues. “I think he breathed in some smoke.”
Dean is four years old and the heat from Sammy's room is blistering, black, acrid smoke belching from the doorway, and Dean is twenty-six and about to drive off the damn road if he doesn't get it together. He straightens Baby up, his knuckles turning white as he grips the steering wheel like it's the only thing holding him together. He already knows.
“Jess?” he asks anyway.
Her name hangs in the air as he listens to the smoky wheeze in Brady's lungs.
“I couldn't,” Brady starts, stops and smothers what could be a cough or a sob. “She didn't make it out.”
Dean releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, a yawning emptiness opening inside him in it's wake. He knew. He knew the minute he heard the sirens and he knew she couldn't have made it out because he already knows that she burned on the ceiling just like Mom, he knew it the moment he picked up the phone.
“Are you-” Dean clears his throat but his voice still sounds strangled. “Can you stay with Sam? I'm a couple hours out. When he wakes up, tell him I'm on my way. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” Brady agrees. “Yeah, I'll... I can do that.”
The silence in the wake of the phone call is suffocating. The outside world passes by on the other side of the Impala's windows and the ache that started in Dean's gut spreads until the empty, hollow feeling clogs his throat and makes it hard to breathe. He doesn't realise he's crying until the tears make it impossible to see the road and he has to jerk the Impala over to the shoulder and jam on the brakes.
Jess is dead.
The girl who made late-night hospital visits bearable, who could recite Sam's history of medications by memory alone and handled the shittier side affects gracefully, who hugged Dean goodbye only days ago while Dean wondered how he'd go about writing a best man speech, is gone. No more baking in her kitchen or drinks in her living room, no fancy Thanksgiving dinner watching Jess and Sam exchange sappy love-soaked smiles across the table. No wedding.
He's curled over in his seat, forehead pressed against the steering wheel and struggling to breathe - something feels broken somewhere deep inside his chest - when he remembers. Sam knew weeks ago. Sam saw it in his nightmares and Dean told him it was all just a bad dream but now it's real and what does that even mean? Was that just a coincidence? Or did Dean miss the signs because he didn't want to see them? Maybe he could have done something. He should have done something. He should have stayed. He knew there was something big happening, had known ever since Dad went radio silent, and if he's just put the pieces together faster-
“Damn it!” Dean yells into the pressing silence, jerking himself upright to - Baby will understand - beat both fists against the wheel. It's not fair. Sam's life was supposed to be safe. Jess was supposed to be safe. College and careers and a white picket fence with 2.5 kids and a freaking dog. Dean's the one who hunts monsters, if anyone was in danger it was meant to be him. Not Sam. Not Jess.
He needs to drive. Dean swipes his hands down his face, his eyes still burning and swollen, and draws in a deep shuddering breath, forcing back any more tears. He needs to be able to see straight if he wants to reach Palo Alto in one piece and he needs to get to Palo Alto now. Guiltily, Dean tucks his memories of the girl who was almost his sister away into the back of his mind and pulls back out onto the road, pressing his foot down.
Jess is dead. Sam is still alive.
XXX
Sam is blank and unreachable in the hospital room, the smell of smoke still clinging to his skin, staining the edges of his mouth and nose an ashy grey beneath the oxygen mask strapped over his face. The doctor assures Dean that it's mostly a precaution; the smoke inhalation was minimal, burns have been avoided altogether, and the grand mal in the ambulance isn't necessarily something to worry about for someone with Sam's condition. Dean listens with the same sense of disconnection that he'd felt while listening to Brady flatly recount his story of the evening - he'd already been over it with the cops, the exhausted student explained, he saw flames in the window on his walk back from a party and got there in time to drag Sam out. He didn't see Jess. He says something about an investigation into the cause of the fire but Dean doesn't need an investigation. He barely has the presence of mind to thank Brady for pulling Sam from the flames before telling the kid that he should go home and get some rest. None of it feels real. It's like all this is happening to someone else, like he's going through the motions of someone else's life, because this can't actually be happening to him, to Sam, to Jess. This can't actually be happening.
Sam looks impossibly small, curled up in the hospital bed on his side with his legs all tucked up and his arms wrapped around the pain inside that the doctors can't reach. Dean slides into the chair at his bedside and slips his hand into Sam's, and Sam looks through him like he isn't even there, his fingers limp and unresponsive to Dean's touch. His nail beds are blackened, Dean notes numbly.
He doesn't know what to say. All he can think about is the time he's spent in this hospital with Jess fussing around Sam's bedside. Her absence sucks all the words from the room. The hospital moves on around them in what seems like the distant background, muted and detached. It feels like any moment Jess will push the curtain aside, bringing coffee and chatter, and Sam's just sleeping off a seizure bad enough to put him in the hospital for the night, not in shock; they'll all head back to the apartment in the morning and Dean can make puke noises while Jess and Sam get sappy and snugly on the couch.
Then Dean thinks, the couch probably burned. It's probably nothing but ashes now. Sam's apartment, Sam's girlfriend, Sam's whole life just burned to the ground, and suddenly, Dean knows exactly what to say.
He leans forward, grips Sam's hand tighter and hopes like hell that the kid can hear him. “I'm going to find it,” he promises. He's never been so sure about anything before in his life. “I'm going to kill it.”
And finally, slowly, awareness bleeds into Sam's blank stare. He reaches up his free hand to pull the oxygen mask from his face and finally meets Dean's gaze.
“I know,” he says. His voice is hoarse, scraping over scorched vocal chords and rough with grief but his tone is just as firm as Dean's. “I'm coming with you.”
END