SPN fic: Amnesty
Title: Amnesty
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Dean, Bobby. Gen.
Warnings: The angst! It burns us!
Spoilers: 6.11
Word Count: 4000
Genre: Talking about feelings, or, you know, not
Disclaimer: Not mine, unless a genie gave me a dream job
Summary: Sam is fine, but Dean is kind of scaring him.
When Sam became himself again, a small star was burrowing through his chest, and Dean was watching. Dean had punched him out and chained him down, chained him, like iron walls wouldn't crush him hard enough, and then, like being Sam wasn't family enough, they'd put something in him-ohgod there's something in me-something that blazed hot and cold, spiking tendrils through his guts and crawling up his nerves and shredding its way into his brain.
As the shocks of pain died away, Sam gazed at Dean, and betrayal filled him, and after betrayal, rage. Dean could never leave well enough alone. He wouldn't leave him, he wouldn't accept him-Dean had to go and make a deal with Death to get Sam possessed by himself, possessed by Sammy, when Sammy had been cold-burnt and lacerated and twisted apart for a hundred years, and was nothing Dean would recognize as Sammy anymore. Dean wouldn't let Sam make his own life. He could never accept who Sam wanted to be-and Sam had been fine! If Dean hadn't such a delusional controlling bastard, he'd never have had to go after Bobby-
Oh, God.
He'd tried to kill Bobby.
How the hell had he tried to kill Bobby? He knew why, the reasoning stacking up like spreadsheet cells, one after the other: protect his self-hood, protect his sanity, scar the vessel with an unacceptable sin, Bobby was the most appropriate available victim. Most appropriate available victim. The equation was valid, but the values were all wrong, the operations were prohibited. His heart sickened. Fear strangled him. Guilt roiled in his guts.
"You were right," he gasped.
"Sammy?" Dean was desperate, mad with hope, a shock away from shattering, and Sam's fear jerked like there was a string on it, shuddering in time with Dean's. They were all woven together. Sam felt Dean's roots in his heart, Bobby's too, twining and sticking in him, because now he was grass like they were, instead of a snake that swam freely through their blades.
Sam unstuck his throat with a click. "Yeah. I think, uh, I think it worked."
"You think?" Dean demanded, eyes tightening, fist wrapping around the door's edge, free hand falling loose and ready to his side-a collection of movements that Sam had barely begun to decode when monster-desolation struck him like a door-slam, and he cringed.
"Yeah, pretty sure." The absurdity of the question registered, and irritation flared. His jaw throbbed where Dean had socked him, and his whiplashed neck screamed in protest as he levered himself onto his elbows. "Ya know, since Death himself put me back together, I think it probably worked." His voice shook, a touch too high. He hadn't meant to snap at Dean, or crack doing it.
Dean was practically vibrating in the doorway, ready to totter off his axis and fling shrapnel in all directions. Sam tugged his feet against the chains, as though tucking his legs in six inches would protect him from the blast. He was guilt-ridden and horrified and shocked and worried about Bobby's back where he'd clubbed him with the pipe, and he was still pissed at Dean for not listening to him and getting his soul replaced behind his back, but as he glanced up at Dean again, the flicker of vast and swelling desperation he saw in his eyes made him rise from the bed until the cuffs caught his wrists, made his mouth dry. Dean was hurt. When?
Words-Dean, what-rose in him, but before they reached his lips, just as he'd begun to take in breath, Dean's wariness collapsed as he half-bolted, half-staggered to the cot. Sam leaned back awkwardly in the manacles. His abs hurt. Dean flung himself to the mattress, one knee on the space Sam had managed to clear, the other on the concrete, and clutched Sam in a tight, painful hug, mashing Sam's arm against his chest and his chest against the wrinkles of his jacket and his scratchy unshaven cheek against the back of his neck. Dean was trembling. Something wet trickled under Sam's hair where Dean's face was, and his skin was clammy.
In the doorway, Bobby was making mashing gestures with his arms, hug him already, you moron. Sam jerked his hands ineffectually in the cuffs, leaned into Dean, and gripped his shoulder with his chin. Dean sagged against him, almost toppling them both over the edge of the cot, then tightened his arms until Sam's ribs began to grate against his spine. "You're kinda scaring me, man," Sam whispered. It was true. Dean wasn't the only one trembling anymore.
"It's my goddamn turn," Dean growled.
Sam watched as Bobby breathed deeply in the doorway, eyes a little too bright. They were both acting like he'd just been dragged up from Hell, and maybe that was technically true, but he didn't feel dragged up from Hell. He felt nervous and guilty and out-of-control, and that was going to be hard to get used to, feeling things again, but unlike what he'd expected when that thin man had taken that miniature star out of that black doctor's bag, he hadn't been possessed or obliterated; he was still him, just . . . more.
Was he really that different?
Dean was crushing the life out of him, shaking with relief.
The next few days were weird.
Bobby solidly refused to blame Sam for trying to kill him, but practically teared up when Sam restocked the refrigerator, bought a new door, offered to clean and reorganize the garages, and at last slumped in a corner with a bottle of whiskey when he realized there was no such thing as an appropriate "sorry I tried to murder you" present. Sam was a sloppy self-loathing mess. Dean and Bobby were overjoyed to help him stumble over to the couch and pass out.
Dean kept talking like Sam had turned into a completely separate person when Death had put his soul back, saying things like, "HAL was a douche, Sammy," and "He was a Terminator-not the original, more like the uber-creepy bitch from T3." Sam remembered Dean's robot jokes, but he didn't remember them smarting before. Dean seemed surprised when Sam would mention anything that had happened since he'd been pulled from the Cage-since his body had been pulled from the cage-surprised and hurt, like he'd assumed that getting his soul back would wipe Sam's slate clean. It was disturbing, to think that Dean had essentially been hoping to kill him by saving him.
The first night, Sam couldn't sleep. He'd sort of forgotten how, more used to wandering around, screwing-had he really? How many?-and researching, unless he'd been pretending to sleep, lying in bed making plans behind his eyelids while Dean snored. The first night, he'd lain down, and his thoughts wouldn't stop racing. He couldn't resist the boredom. His heart roared in his ears and his guts soured as he wondered just what he'd roped them all into when he'd offered Balthazar a blank-check favor that same afternoon. It ate at him. He tried to sleep-he needed to, his eyes were sore and swimmy with exhaustion-but he couldn't make himself do things anymore just because he had to. Faint light stole under the door and lined out the guest room he shared with Dean in grainy black-and-white. He left Dean snoring, negotiating the loose boards with cautious feet as he crept downstairs.
He found Bobby in the kitchen, squinting at the computer and prodding at the bandage that stuck out from under his hat as rockabilly played softly. Concussion watch. Sam suggested poker, remembering how frustrating it is to browse the Internet for hours on end with a head injury, and Bobby raised an eyebrow. "Friendly poker game?"
"Uh," Sam said. He hesitated at the kitchen door, torn between escape and obligation.
"Relax, boy," Bobby grunted, turning his back on him as he retrieved the box of cards and chips. "You weren't exactly yourself."
There were at least four different blunt objects within Bobby's reach as he grabbed the box. Sam spent the first two hands listening to his subconscious analyze exactly how he'd screwed up and let Bobby escape-what he could have done different, to have killed Bobby before Dean got back. His subconscious sounded just like him.
He lost miserably.
His eyes were heavy when Bobby put him out of the game, hugged him-hard, quick, like he'd been out of contact for a year-and patted him on the back. Sam trudged back up the stairs, slipped back into the spare room, and sat on his too-small bed with a soft creak of springs, watching the shadows slide apart, turning from murk into walls, wainscoting, a crack in the corner, Dean's face twisted and lined in the gloom. He felt impulse-bound, unpredictable. He was exhausted, but he still couldn't make himself lie down and face the insomnia like a man.
His back itched, and when he twisted his arm around to scratch it, a bed spring twanged. Dean jackknifed upright, eyes flashing white in the light of the door, a long ragged gasp rasping in his throat.
Sam hadn't meant to wake him up.
"Going somewhere?" Dean growled. Dean's voice was thick with sleep, it held a languid irresistible lethality, fate-scarred, hell-trained. This was Dean in despair. This was Dean ready to kill what had brought him there. This tone had never before been directed at Sam.
Sam froze. "Couldn't sleep," he muttered, afraid to raise his voice, afraid to break Dean, afraid Dean would break him.
"Try," Dean ordered him. Sam slid into bed without protest, feet dangling off the end, and drew the blankets around with steady, cautious movements. He felt like he was pacifying a savage dog. He lay still the rest of the night, occasionally peering at Dean through one eye, always finding him perched on the opposite bed, staring, judging. Sam drifted off sometime around dawn.
Dean was scaring him. It figured that Sam would spend most of his first few days as a real boy again, scared of and for his brother. For was familiar. Of was new.
Whatever was eating Dean, Sam figured it had to be something he'd done while he'd been a soulless abomination, instead of just a regular abomination. He slipped away from Dean-being around Dean just made him want to interrogate him or strangle him-lost himself to the familiar rhythm of his morning workout, and rested by an upstairs window, trying to figure out what, exactly, was Dean's problem.
Picking through his memories to figure out when he'd hurt Dean's feelings was like watching mute footage when all he wanted was the dialogue, or using a dictionary as a thesaurus. There was information, but it was the wrong kind of information, organized wrong-all creature behavior, death statistics, risk assessment, and weapon maintenance. He got the impression he'd been filing Dean under weapon maintenance.
He'd skipped out and almost stuck Bobby in the heart, trying to keep Dean from making him whole again; that was probably shades of Ruby with bonus horrific tragedy, but Dean had just shaken his head, pity and fury warring in his face, when Sam had brought it up. Dean was drinking a lot, had been for a while, had been since Hell; it couldn't give Sam a time-line, because it just hadn't stopped-why hadn't it ever stopped?
Dean should have been doing better. The apocalypse was through. The corporeal monsters were acting up all over the planet, but that just meant they got to do more shooting and less grave-digging and exorcising. Sam had been sort-of out of Hell. They weren't hunting isolated anymore; Mom's family was around if they ever needed back-up. Dean had a girlfriend and a surrogate son who adored him, though he seemed to have lost contact with them for some reason, ever since he'd run off like a moron and invited himself into their house while he was still a vampire. The Impala was running okay . . .
. . . Wait.
Sam bolted downstairs three at a time, his heart skipping and shuddering, vision swimming black and red. The walls were tilting. His breath dragged in his throat, his hands and feet were numb, and if he'd stopped running he might have vomited, but he couldn't stop: he had to get to Dean, had to tell him-ask him-they had to talk. Dean was his polestar, and his feet were taking him home.
The screen door clattered behind him as he burst into the yard. Dean had been avoiding him, when he wasn't staring like he'd disappear, or appraising him like Sam was an actor he expected to break character at any moment, and when Dean wanted to avoid Sam at Bobby's house, Dean would go to the yard. Sam caught the hoarse hum of a heat fan from one of the garages, and the cars blurred past until he stumbled through the unlocked door.
Something metal clattered to the concrete. Across the garage, Dean looked pale and shaken in the stuttering fluorescent light.
"You gotta tell me," Sam gasped, dodging dead cars and dented tool chests. His chest heaved involuntarily, drawing in air until his palms burned cold and his vision swam. "Dean-"
Dean drew back against a worktable, his right hand poised on the wood, inches from a large crescent wrench, and his eyes narrowed and glittered.
"I'm trying to remember-"
"Don't," Dean barked.
"I'm not, not that, I'm trying to remember what I did, up here, 'cause you're doing this passive aggressive thing you do, but I-" Sam cut himself off and swallowed. "I can't figure it out. Not on my own. I was thinking back, when you and me were hunting lately, 'cause something's been eating you up, man, I can tell, and I couldn't figure it out and couldn't figure it out-"
Dean listened, wary, impassive.
"-and it hit me: I fed you to that vamp! I used you, I got you cursed! And then I forgot the whole goddamn thing!" Sam felt his eyes widening, pleading, Dean's face fading in and out of focus as he took a few more stumbling steps closer. "What kind of person forgets something like that? I thought it was a non-issue, thought we'd dealt with it, so I just . . . shoved it in a box and moved on, just like that, and it took me two days to even remember. What the hell else did I do? What'd I do to you?"
"Sam, shut up," Dean snapped. Sam swallowed. Dean never looked at him like that, not even after Sam had attacked him three years ago. Sam forced himself very still, his lungs still begging for air even as his body tingled from hyperventilating. He knew this expression of Dean's, but it was rare, and it had never been for him, not until now.
"You wanted to know how it felt, remember that?" Dean asked, his voice soft and controlled. Sam felt something exquisitely cruel and desolate in the air.
He remembered herding Dean back into their hotel room that night, wondering if there was some evolutionary link between vampires and whatever Azazel had been. He nodded.
"My head hurt," Dean told him. "A lot. Think ten tequila hangovers minus the fiesta. My eyes hurt. For a while it was like there were little worms crawling around in there, they itched like I got fiberglass in the backs of my eyeballs, then they just burned whenever you flicked on a table lamp. There was hardly any lights in the nest, but it looked like office hours in there. Cars were like freight trains. I could hear the sparks in electrical sockets. You were moving in slow motion, Samuel, Lisa, everybody, just dumb slow clumsy loud bags of food, just skin and bone between me and the red stuff. The vampires were easier to hang with, 'cause them, I just hated 'em, they didn't make me hungry. I wanted blood, Sam."
Sam backed a step, and Dean advanced, slowly. "Kept popping into my head," Dean murmured, the words just audible beneath the buzz of the heating fan. "Butchering all those sonsabitches barely kept my mind off how frickin hungry I was. I was a machine. Big bad vamps all went down like drunken frat rejects, and every one of those miserable bastards used to be like me. I was turning into something I'm not, Sam. Just one drink, and I'd never come back, just one more monster for someone to put down. And I wanted it anyway."
"Dean, I'm so sorry," Sam breathed. His hands were shaking. The bottom had dropped out of his world; he recognized what Dean was repeating, the artful way that Dean was tugging at his hidden wounds, and he thought, blaspheming, why have you forsaken me?
Dean smirked, sharp as splinters. "But you just wanted to know how it felt, physically."
It was true. Sam shook his head mechanically, but it was all true. The night replayed in exhaustive clinical detail: Dean had recovered quickly from the vampire's beating, growing erratic and irritable, then unexpectedly cunning, supplanting Sam's plans with wholesale slaughter. The cure had taken Dean down like a taser to the spine, and Sam had left him on the floor, figuring he'd be fine as long as he kept breathing. He'd used Dean as a tool, and it had been the most natural thing in the world.
What else? he demanded, and his memory rolled out blurred and benign. There could be atrocities there, camouflaged like black ice on blacktop. He would have killed Bobby to survive, but he'd betrayed Dean because it was convenient. In the line of duty.
"M'sorry," Sam gasped, choking on horror so deep that the world blurred and echoed like he was peering up at it, trapped at the bottom of a well. "M'sorry, I dunno-sorry, I'm so goddamn sorry-"
Dean twitched, shoulders tightening, a dozen cords and pistons racking into place, and for an instant Sam knew he'd be eating Dean's fists again. Dean pivoted, and the garage wall clanged, corrugated steel rippling as Dean's boots and fists dented it again and again, booming like a broken gong, a blood-smeared gong.
Sam grabbed Dean by the elbows and yanked him back-goddamnit, Bobby had everything they needed when it was life-or-death, so couldn't the man have a heavy bag? A sack of grain? Something his brother could spend his rage against with his bare hands?
Sam could work. He spun Dean by the shoulders, steadied him just a hair until his feet caught up with the rest of him, and dodged back a half-step, just barely an arm-length, the perfect range for the perfect target. Another time, he might have tucked his fists up and crouched like a boxer, but today, that would be counterproductive. He stood straight, his arms dangling at his sides. Dean surged for the bait, then halted. "Get outta here," he snarled through his teeth.
"Dean?" Sam's hand drifted toward Dean's shoulder of its own accord, and Dean recoiled as though it were a snake.
"Out," Dean insisted, backing away. "Now."
Sam had a list. Thank God-or whatever-he'd made a list.
The list was a matter of personal safety, a long Publisher document of newspaper photos, discrete camera-phone shots, and brief biographies of people Sam had encountered while hunting alone, an enemies list. These were people who, if Sam encountered them by chance in a bar, might be waiting outside with weapons later in the night, thirsting for revenge.
Maynard family. Sixteen-year-old son had been a werewolf. Sam had shot him in the chest from the window of the Charger as the kid was biking to school, but he'd had to park and chase the boy through the woods to finish the job. The road hadn't been empty. The shooting would be high-profile. Someone could have noticed the car.
Nora Oakley, nee Jenning. Only surviving member of the Providence branch of the Jenning family. The other Jennings had comprised the Jenning coven.
Matt Brown. Anthropology professor who'd summoned Anna Kuari and killed fifteen people for tribute when the demoness had quadrupled the gold bullion he'd inherited. Was still in default to two loan corporations when Sam had exorcised his golden goose.
Albert Reinbeck. Caught Sam desecrating his wife's remains, threatened to get a rifle until Sam had clubbed him with his shovel.
Julia X, no photo. Boyfriend got mauled by the wendigo he and Sam had gone after.
That was page one of eleven.
The memories trickled in with the words, sluggish and patchy. It was like trying to remember all the food runs he'd done over the past six months: he had a general outline for what must have happened, the necessary components of each incident-interview, interview, break-in, history, interview, pursuit, kill, departure-but nothing stood out. Faces and stories melted together like sale-bin protein bars and boxes of ammo, even "Eric Kowalski. Shtriga bait."
The frightening thing was that it all made sense-he remembered everything making sense at the time, while now, he couldn't even put into words what horrified him about his hunting log. He'd been efficient, he knew. Cold, but not cruel, not like the things he'd been killing. Efficiency was good, when saving people was the goal.
Saving people hadn't been the only goal.
The list only covered incidents with living witnesses.
Dean's boots thumped behind him, and Sam jumped, before minimizing the list. Dean looked muddled and sullen, and he reeked of Wild Turkey. "So I said some shit," he grunted.
Sam locked himself down, watching Dean. Fury roused, blind and familiar. "You taking it back?" Sam challenged. Dean couldn't protect Sam from what Sam had done, any more than he could erase the knife-marks he'd left in Sam's heart.
"Don't go all Oprah on me, I don't speak chick."
Sam sneered. He shouldn't be sneering; he was the one who'd fed his own brother to vampires, but he did it anyway.
Dean looked at the floor and leaned against the opposite wall. "This is messed up," he muttered. He looked at Sam. "I shouldn'a said that shit, to you. You weren't even there, it's just, him, he didn't, he wasn't-"
Sam crossed the room and grabbed Dean's shoulders. "Yes, I was," he hissed. "I was right there, I saw everything. Dean, man, just because I got my soul back-I'm not some whole other person!"
"Yes, you are!" Dean barked, hoarse. One of his hands clapped on to Sam's arm, vibrating in place as though unsure whether to pull him in or shove him off. "Goddamnit, you're the soul! And you were gone; there was just this, this psychopath walkin' around, pretending to be you!"
"That's not how I remember it," Sam muttered.
"Trust me." Dean patted him on the shoulder and pushed off the wall, pacing over to the window. "Just because you got all his memories-"
"-doesn't make me him," Sam finished, recalling that conversation, sitting in the car telling Dean whatever he thought would be most useful for him to believe.
"You're not him," Dean murmured, staring down through the dirty glass at the yard.
No, Sam thought, as he hovered inside the door, but he's me.
Sam really hated being possessed. He hated when things messed with his stuff, when they ambushed his family, and when they killed people to spite him, but the unique part of the whole sucky experience, the part that distinguished an "I'm possessed" nightmare from an "I've turned evil and murdered everyone I love" nightmare, was the sense of being smothered in plastic wrap, locked into a form-fitting remote controlled suit, screaming in protest as lascivious coils of black steam or loving barbs of light wreathed and penetrated him.
He always noticed.
He hadn't been possessed this year. He didn't feel like he was possessed now, or, as far as he could imagine, like he was possessing anyone else. What had happened, he'd deduced, was that a chunk of himself had been running around unsupervised, like a car without the driver and steering column. Missing components were recovered and replaced; problem solved. But that wasn't how he remembered it. As far as he was concerned, he'd just . . . been there.
He was getting better at figuring what he ought to regret; it was a matter of asking himself the right questions and extrapolating from the information he'd deemed noteworthy at the time. Wendigo? He'd used a hunter as bait. Shapeshifter with a pattern of home invasion, murder, and kidnapping? He'd staked out the house, letting the unsuspecting family go about their business. It was simple. Sam knew how he'd been thinking then, because those thoughts were part of him.
A lot of it was a part of him; he could tell because when Dean wasn't gazing at him like he'd just risen from the grave, he was shocked and aghast like he'd just sucked down a demon's jugular right in front of him. Dean was still seeing "Robo-Sam" because "Robo-Sam" was still there, in the way Sam walked, took his coffee, popped in and out of a room, read, ate, anything-and then Dean would melt with relief, for no reason Sam could identify.
Sam wished he could tell the difference like Dean could.
He was an amnesiac soul plugged into a life he hadn't been living, and the parts that were him-the lovely vacation souvenirs that were the only way to prove that he'd been gone at all-were a sea of pain and madness tucked away by a fragile dam and the admonition, "Don't scratch." The missing parts were right there.
Robo-Sam wouldn't have scratched, but Sam was only human.
He needed to know.
Note: I don't really like the word "feel" as in "I'm sorry you feel that way" or "Do you feel the way I feel?" or "I just don't feel like it." So this was a bit of a challenge.
One thing about emotional experiences that I do know, is that memory records the emotion we felt at the time, recreating the emotion when we recall the memory, if in a somewhat muted form. (Because memories are actually re-recorded to some degree after each recall, talking about traumas in a comfortable setting actually does help to minimize their impact.) Different people will recall different aspects of the same experience according to their expertise (a doctor will remember injuries, age, sex, and weight, while an architect will remember nearby buildings) and their priorities (people with families will mostly remember things that happened to their family members and themselves).
Or you can think of memory recall as a tag system, like here. Some people tag all fic, "fic." Some people tag by rating, some by character, some by pairing, according to what categories they think are most important to define their work. Journals of people who think of fanfic in a different way from you can be hard to search in. If a piece doesn't even get a tag? You won't see it.
Original Sam probably had a Guilt tag. Any time he thought he should feel guilty, he could call up the tag, and all the stupid things he'd ever done would bubble up to the front of his mind's eye. Robo-Sam didn't even feel guilt, so he never used the tag, not for storage, and not for recall. This makes it difficult for Resouled Sam to realize that there's a whole new truckload of things to feel guilty about, until he starts browsing recent entries one-by-one. It's a slow and tedious process.