Title: Unravel
Author: JACmRob
Characters: Sam, Dean, Caleb, gen
Tags: Weechesters
Author's Notes: So this is my first fic for Supernatural, currently my favorite fanfic category. Please review, I'm sorry if it's bad. On impulse, I wrote it from a really wierd perspective. Second person, present tense, Dean's point of view. I love the weechesters, though. That's basically all I read. They have such a troubled, ambiguous childhood that makes for such good fics.
You can somehow sense that tonight isn't going to be a normal night. Call it a sixth sense, or whatever, but you can always feel when your life is going to take a wrong turn. You don't know if something bad is going to necessarily happen, but your freaky intuition is setting off alarm bells in your head. Your dad's gone on a hunt and won't be back four a couple of days.
You spot Sam's shaggy brown head peaking up from the couch.
"What's up, kiddo?" you ask, flopping down onto the couch beside him.
He isn't doing anything, just sitting and gazing off into space, and it's freaking you out a little bit. He shrugs.
"Hey, weirdo—" you say, snapping your fingers in his face. "Earth to Sam."
He starts. He regards you thoughtfully, chewing on his lower lip. You can tell he's thinking hard, but his eyes look distant and confused.
"Do you think there's any way to change the future?"
"Um…" You're stumped. "How so?"
"Like," he struggles to find the words. "Like… if you know something is going to happen, is there any way to change it?"
"Well, I guess," you say, wondering where he's going with this. "Just, do the opposite of what you're supposed to do."
"But what if—" His brow furrows. "What if by trying to stop something from happening, you cause it to happen?"
"Why are you asking about this?" you ask tiredly.
"Like, you knew you knew something was going to happen, so it happens because the future knows you're going to try and change it but you can't because you aren't changing the future, you're living it, because you already knew about the change."
You wonder about him so much. You can't fathom the way his mind works, or what it must be like inside his head. You always tell him that his brain's on a different frequency from the rest of the world.
"Doesn't that make sense to you, Dean?"
"That doesn't make any sense at all, Sammy," you reply, wondering how his mind always brings him to these illogical conclusions. He looks so lost, and you want to protect him, to keep him safe and sheltered, but you don't know how.
"You don't understand me, Dean," he says softly. It isn't a question.
"You think too much," you answer.
"I can't help it," he says miserably. You can see a thought he's biting back, something he's unsure of, caught in his throat like a hibernating moth.
"What is it?" you ask. You may not get him, but you can still read him better than anyone else.
"Dean…" he starts hesitantly. He changes his mind half way through. "…never mind."
"Just spit it out," you say. He worries you.
"What if…" He bites his lip. "What if there's something wrong with me?"
"Of course there's something wrong with you," you joke. "I knew it from the day Dad dropped you on the head as a baby."
"No, Dean!" He's upset. "I'm being serious."
You know he is; he's far more serious than any ten-year-old should ever be.
"Then tell me," you say. You have no idea what he might be talking about, but it scares you. "I don't care what you tell me, Sammy. I'm not going to get mad."
He bites the nail on his thumb; it's a nervous habit that crops up when he's in the throes of some fierce internal struggle. You throw an arm over his thin shoulders.
"What is it?" you probe impatiently.
"What if… something happened to me when mom died?"
You freeze.
"What do you mean?" you ask warily. Sam reads the expression on your face and knows he's said too much.
"Nothing. Never mind."
"Sammy…" you growl. He takes a deep breath.
"What if the… the demon did something to me?"
You know Sam's aware that a demon killed Mom, but nothing more. That's all you told him. Sam looks at you expectantly, but you say nothing, waiting for him to elaborate. He takes a reluctant breath.
"What if the demon wasn't coming for Mom?" He begins to talk very fast. "I mean, why was it in my room? And—and Mom wasn't there in the first place, she just came in—" Sam is speaking so quickly that you think he can't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth anymore. You can hear his voice shaking. "—but she wasn't there before but h-he pinned her to the ceiling and—"
"How'd you know about that?"
Your heart is pounding. Sam clamps his mouth shut, looking trapped.
"Sammy!" All the color has drained from your face.
"I… I heard Dad and Pastor Jim talking about it once."
You can sense he's lying.
"Tell me the truth, Sam," you say in that voice he wouldn't dare repute.
"Dean…" he whispers.
"Don't change the subject," you answer gravely.
"Something's wrong with me," he says, his voice catching.
"Stop saying that," you reply fiercely, pulling him closer. His head is resting near your shoulder; the ends of his too-long brown hair tickle your chin. "That demon son-of-a-bitch didn't do anything to you."
"But those dreams…"
"They're just nightmares, Sammy."
"They aren't normal nightmares!" he protests angrily. "They aren't like other dreams! They're too real!"
"It's in your head, Sammy—"
"It's not in my head!" He cuts you off. "It's not!"
He sounds desperate. So desperate, that you can tell he's going to let something big slip. You don't know how much more of this you can take. All you can think is fuck. That's your brother—your baby brother. What if he's right? The thought of that demonic bastard laying a hand on him makes you feel sick.
"The dreams aren't just dreams, Dean! I see stuff—stuff that's happened! And there's always a man, with yellow eyes and—and—"
He's crying now. Not heavy weeping, but tears that slip past his eyelids and dampen his cheeks even though he tries to stop them. You hate seeing him cry, because Sam hardly ever cries. He's learned at a young age that he won't get any sympathy from Dad, not unless it's really important.
"I've seen Mom die thousands of times and I can't ever stop it. And sometimes—sometimes I see stuff that hasn't happened yet, and then it does happen. And—"
He can't go on, burying his face into your shoulder instead. He tries to stem his tears, and you can feel his face screwing up with the effort of it. Instinctively, you raise a hand, running it through his hair.
Your mind feels numb.
You remember the salt and burn Dad brought you and Sam on last week. The remains hadn't been in the grave, where you thought you'd find them, and the ghost was kicking Dad's ass. But Sammy had somehow known that the bones would be in the walls, taking a hammer to the plaster until a corpse had rolled out. You and Dad couldn't get over his "lucky guess." He stayed strangely quiet on the way home.
A lot of things begin to make sense now, but your stomach twists at the thought of why they do. You try to think of some logical explanation, but none comes. You wonder how long Sam's been sitting on this one for.
"Don't tell Dad," Sam says softly, startling you out of your reverie.
"What?" you ask.
"He'll— Dean, I—" he sniffles. He pauses, unsure of how to say what he's thinking. "All Dad cares about is fighting evil."
"That's not true," you defend. "He cares about us."
"What if I'm evil?" he asks, so quietly that you can barely hear it.
The thought of what Sammy is getting at is so appalling you can scarcely bear to think of it.
"Sammy," you say forcefully. You slip a hand under his face and lift his chin so that his eyes meet yours.
"Dad is not going to hunt you," you say. "How could you even think that?"
He can't hold your gaze, and he looks away.
"Please don't tell him," he whispers. "Can't you just… forget I told you?"
You seriously doubt that.
"We'll figure this out, Sammy. Whatever it is."
You face the supernatural every day—maybe this is just one of those unexplainable things. Maybe it has nothing to do with your mother or the Yellow-Eyed Demon. But, of course, this is your family. It's never that simple. You can't stand the thought of Sam somehow being tainted by the supernatural. You're supposed to take care of him.
"Why don't you get some sleep, kiddo?" you suggest, prodding at his body pressed into your side. It's already eleven o'clock. You can tell he doesn't want to, but he heaves himself up obediently and trudges to his room. You suddenly understand why he never wants to go to bed, why you wake up at two in the morning to find him downstairs watching TV or reading a book.
"I'll watch some TV," you propose, flopping onto the bed next to him. He only nods, but you can tell he's grateful. He curls up under the covers by your side and you flip on reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. You watch it without really seeing; you can't focus on anything, not when your mind is buzzing.
The flashing pictures illuminate the dark room. Sam seems so small besides you. You wish, not for the first time, that he could be a normal ten-year-old, picking on girls at recess and goofing off in school. A kid whose biggest worry was if he'd win the soccer game on Saturday. You wish that your family was whole, that your mother was still alive, that you lived in the white-picket-fence-development Sam so desperately wanted. You wish that you had never heard of hellhounds, wendigos, succubae, and tricksters, that you believed vampires and werewolves were real only on Halloween, that your dad gave you a night-light instead of a gun when you told him there were monsters under your bed. You run your fingers through Sam's soft hair absentmindedly, rubbing the nape of his neck, something that always comforts him when he's upset. You can't stand thinking of what the demon could have done to him, and how there's nothing you can do to look after him this time.
You murmur, "I'm going to protect you," pressing a light kiss to his forehead, knowing he is already asleep. You watch him intently as he dreams, his brow scrunched up, his lips curved into a slight frown.
You don't know why, but you're suddenly terribly frightened, more so than you've been all night. You're fourteen years old, but you want your dad back.
You call Caleb.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Damian."
"Sup, Deuce?" You can hear voices in the background talking loudly. It sounds like he's at a bar.
"Where are you?" you ask.
"Houston," he says. "Is this important, dude? There's this hot girl checking me out. You'd totally be into her, even though she's, like, twice your age. Amazing tits."
"Yeah," you say, trying to sound enthusiastic. He doesn't buy it.
"What's wrong?"
You mumble something incoherently. Are you going to tell him the truth? Why did you call him in the first place? To convince yourself you weren't going insane?
"Deuce? Is everything okay? Is it your dad? Is it Sam?"
"Yeah, it's Sam," you mutter brokenly.
"Hang on—" you can hear the shuffle of movement, and the voices in the background grow quieter. "Is he okay? Is he hurt? Do you need me to drive up there?"
"No—no, he's fine," you say, utterly unconvincingly. "He's—"
You bite your tongue. Caleb waits out the pause. He can sense you're about to say something.
"You don't think… the Yellow-Eyed Demon…did anything to him when he was a baby, do you?"
The question comes from nowhere. There's a beat.
"Okay I'm coming down there. Dean, what is going on?" Caleb sounds flustered and you can hear more movement.
"No, Caleb. Everything's fine."
"Tell me honestly, Dean—what's going on with Sam? Why would you even think that all of a sudden?"
You can't tell him. Suddenly, it feels like you can't tell anyone. You wonder why Sammy had to drop this bomb on you, and then feel horribly guilty. How long did he keep it from you?
"There's nothing wrong with Sammy," you say. "I just—I don't know. Maybe he's acting weirder than usual. Just answer me this: the demon—was it coming for him? Do you think it… infected him somehow?"
Caleb can hear how worried you are, and he responds slowly and evenly, as if trying to calm you down by osmosis.
"I really don't know what the demon was coming for, dude. But Sammy seems like any normal ten-year-old. Well," he corrects himself, "As normal as a Winchester can be."
He takes a long breath.
"Look, if anything…weird starts happening to your brother, tell your dad. He'll know what to do. And even if something did happen to him—well, he's still your brother. Luke Skywalker, remember? He's not going dark-side on you."
"Yeah," you say, exhaling deeply.
"You worry about him too much," Caleb says. "Let him be a kid. Hell, you're still a kid. Sammy will be fine. He's one tough little bugger. Remember when he bit that police man?"
You manage a laugh. You do remember that.
At eleven, Dad was taking you on your first hunt and leaving Sam alone for the first time. He had tried to sneak out and follow you and Dad, but a lone kid wandering around a deserted Indian reservation was immediately picked up by the cops. The "benevolent police officer" had tried to shelter the "lost child" at the police headquarters until his parents could be found. Sam had screamed (for the entire station to hear) that the man was a 'stupid shitface' and had proceeded to chomp the officer's hand when the he had reached to take the flask of holy water Dad had entrusted to Sam. The outraged sheriff had related the story, sparing no detail, to you and Dad when he returned and tucked seven-year-old Sammy beneath his arm. After which, the police officer had sent Dad a bill for the stitches.
"Take care of yourself, okay kid?" Caleb says.
"Bye, Damian," you respond, hanging up the phone.
You go back to Sam's room to check on him and know immediately he's having a nightmare. He's pale as a ghost beneath the sheets, tossing and muttering something unintelligibly. You grasp his shoulder, shaking it. Sam sits bolt upright, gasping.
"Nightmare, kiddo," you say as he leans heavily into you. He's trembling. You rub small circles across his back, wondering what he's seen this time. His hand reaches up to clutch your t-shirt.
"Want to talk about it?" you ask.
You feel his head shake against your chest and you don't push the issue. Finally, his breathing returns to normal. He's slumped on your shoulder, asleep again. The house is so quiet that you can hear your own heartbeat pounding in your ears, mingled with the steady rise and fall of Sam's breathing. In the suffocating silence, you wonder what you are going to do.
Dean sat bolt upright. A cold sweat had broken out on his neck. He threw the covers of himself and rolled onto the edge of the bed. On the motel bed opposite his, Sam lay asleep.
Dean stood, slipping out the door and into the chilly night air. The dream felt more vivid in his mind than any memory.
You knew all along, the voice in his head whispered accusingly. You should have told your Dad then and there, but you didn't. You tried to figure it out but when you couldn't, you pushed it into the back of your mind and stopped thinking about it. And as Sam got older, the nightmares began to disappear, or maybe Sam just got better at hiding them. But you couldn't erase what you knew, and now it's come back to bite you in the ass.
Sam dropped the same bomb a second time, but somehow Dean felt less prepared to deal with it than when he was fourteen years old. He certainly didn't have any more answers now. Had Sam's dreams of Jessica been the first he'd had since he was younger? Why were the nightmares suddenly becoming important again?
He exhaled deeply, his breath appearing as a silver mist.
He'd missed the chance to tell his father. John Winchester would have an answer; Dean's unflagging faith in the man told him that much. Now, his father was missing, and suddenly everything was unraveling all over again.
A/N: This ends on an unfinished note, I know, but I'm not continuing it because I'm notoriously terrible at keeping up with my stories. I definately want to write more weechesters, though. Love me some protective big brother. =)
-JR