Behind our lullabies - SN ficlet - PG
Title: Behind our lullabies, the hooves of terrible horses thunder and drum
Fandom: "Supernatural"
Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from Carol Ann Duffy.
Warnings: takes place between “The Benders” and “Shadow” in season one
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 960
Point of view: third
Prompt: horse
They were hunting a ghost horse in Montana, a beast that hadn’t killed anyone yet but cost thousands dollars in damages and broken a few bones.
“How, exactly,” Sam demanded as Dean drove them into town, “do we find the bones of a horse?”
Dean shrugged.
o0o
They spent days researching, with no results at all. They walked the haunted property in the afternoons, also with no results.
Sam woke up at two in the morning on Sunday, and Dean was gone. The impala was still parked outside the room, but Dean wasn’t anywhere to be found. It was two in the morning and Dean was gone without a word.
Sam didn’t panic. He got dressed and first checked out the car-maybe Dean had been jumped while heading out for a drive-but there was no evidence of anything. He wasn’t panicking, but the last time they’d been separated, they’d both almost been killed by inbred cannibals. He called Dean’s phone, but it rang in his duffle in the room.
“Shit, Dean,” he muttered. “Where are you?”
He leaned against the impala, rested his head on the cool roof. Where could Dean have gone?
And then Sam remembered how Dean stared out at the haunted field.
“You didn’t,” Sam said. “Damnit, Dean!”
o0o
He pulled up just off the property. There were no lights but the impala’s, star, and moon. Sam didn’t know where to start. Nearly five hundred acres, the horse had shown up on. And if Sam couldn’t find him, the horse would probably kill Dean.
Sam grabbed the shotgun and went hunting.
o0o
“Dean!” he yelled. “Dean!” He shone the flashlight on the ground to keep sure footing. He’d been looking for almost an hour. “Dean!”
He heard a faint whooping and froze, straining to listen. It came again, from the west. He took off in that direction, following the sound; the closer he got, he heard others-hoofbeats thundering, horses bugling, and Dean’s laughter, soaring above it all.
“Dean!” Sam turned in place. He could hear so much, but nothing was in sight. “Dean!”
The horses appeared in the distance, galloping toward him, glowing bright as starlight. He didn’t run, didn’t move, just watched them come.
Dean rode on the lead horse, lit up by the herd’s glow. He passed Sam on the left and the rest streamed around him without stirring a speck of dust. He turned to follow them with his eyes and they vanished into the air, until only the lead horse and Dean remained.
They circled around and galloped to him, past him, circled again. “Dean!” he called, hands tight on his gun. He’d dropped the flashlight when he first saw the herd. “C’mon, Dean, wake up!”
Dean’s laughter floated over the still Montana air. The horse tossed its head, mane billowing out and resettling. It pawed at the dirt before loping some more.
“Dean!” He screamed his brother’s name as loud as he could and it echoed out over the plain.
In the distance, the horse stopped. Bright, gleaming, a phantasm of the past with his brother on its back-it turned and he yelled again. “Dean!”
Dean patted the horse’s phantom neck. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said. Sam heard him clearly in the silence of the night. “You need to move on with your family now.”
The horse nickered as Dean swung down; then it spun around and vanished into the distance, leaving only the moon and stars to light up the landscape.
Sam stormed up to Dean and grabbed his shoulders. “What the hell were you doing?” he demanded, shaking Dean.
Dean laughed, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “She just wanted someone to run with her, Sammy,” he said. “She’s gone now-they all are.” He glanced in the direction the ghosts went. “I wish-” His voice trailed off.
Just before Sam panicked that his brother would follow the herd, Dean shook himself out of it. “Where’s the car?”
“Um,” Sam said. “The driveway?”
He ducked as Dean swatted at him. “You walked all around the haunted acres? You tryin’ to get stampeded on?”
Sam gaped. “You joined the ghosts!” he shot back. “You have no room to talk. At all. Ever again.”
“I’m sorry,” Dean said softly. “I just-I had to go. She was waiting outside and I couldn’t stop. I had to see her, and then I couldn’t go back in to wake you.”
Sam responded, “’s’kay. Just-let’s not do this again.”
Dean chuckled sadly. “They were the last, Sammy. She just wanted a human who understood.”
Sam stared at him. “Dean,” he said. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. They’ve moved on to whatever comes next.” He glanced around. “Let’s camp here. We’ll head back to the car at sunup.”
“Camp?” Sam asked, letting Dean’s deflection work for now. “All I have are a gun and a flashlight.”
“Well,” Dean told him, face lit up by gentle moonlight, “all I need is the ground and the sky.”
Sam stared at him as Dean flopped down, stretching out on the grassy dirt.
“Dean,” he tried, settling next to him. “Did-as a kid, did you ever ride a horse?”
“Nope,” Dean answered quietly. “I always wanted to, but never got the chance.”
“You looked good,” Sam said. “Natural.” Thinking back, it frightened him how right Dean seemed at that ghost mare. Like they’d ride off into the horizon and never come back.
But Sam had called his name and Dean told the horse to go on without him, and Sam took comfort in that.
At sunup, though, Sam decided, he’d kick Dean’s ass for leaving him in that room to go play with ghosts.