Story Title: After Sam
Character/Relationships: Sam, Dean, Lisa, Ben, Castiel, OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: Cicero has been quiet and safely boring since the changelings, but now something is stirring in the depths of the reservoir.
Warnings: Spoilers for Season 6, some bad language
Word count: 5266
Complete: Yes
Prologue
The lake surface was dark, reflecting nothing. The dog snuffled happily and aimlessly at the faint rippled edges of the water, turning dead leaves with its damp black nose. Its enthusiastic rootling around stirred up new and exciting scents that thrilled his doggy senses.
Unfortunately, scents were not all that was stirring.
The creature was old. Ancient even. Had been old when the pyramids were being built in Giza, old when the Chinese were creating culture, old when man was discovering fire. But it had always had a taste for blood. Warm blood.
And it was always hungry.
It smelled flesh. Fresh and appetising.
It rose with a rush to the surface and opened its jaws wide, then wider, with a blast of foul breath that took the dog entirely by surprise. Razor sharp teeth, huge and curved like scimitars, closed with a terrible snap round the startled animal's head, taking it whole and chewing down on the sinews of its neck with an arterial spurt of red. The dog died instantly, without a sound.
Chapter 1
Dean was out of quarters. Again. He lay back on the newly-still bed, hands clasped behind his head, elbows akimbo, ankles crossed and sighed loudly in mourning for the absence of magic fingers. He gave his brother a hard stare but Sam was doing a very good job of ignoring him, his huge frame hunched awkwardly over his laptop, long fingers flashing over the keys with an unceasing tap-tap-tapping that was really starting to get on Dean's nerves. He narrowed his eyes and tried another deep sigh. He frowned when this attempt was received with exactly the same lack of reaction as his previous effort. Clearly subtlety was getting him nowhere, so he went for a direct approach.
"Dude, you going to be geeking out on that thing all night?"
Sam finally looked up, staring at Dean as if his grumbling sibling had suddenly grown two heads.
"Dean. Uh. I thought you'd gone out to that bar over the road hours ago."
The elder Winchester's eyebrows shot up, incredulous at that damning admission of disregard for his existence.
"Well, that's just peachy. I've been waiting patiently for you to finish whatever the hell it is you are doing for the last hour or so, and all the while you had totally forgotten I was in the room!"
Sam didn't even have the grace to look apologetic as he huffed out an absent-minded "Sorry".
Dean fairly flounced off the bed in disgust. Shoving his Colt 1911 down the back of the waistband of his jeans, he adjusted his plaid shirt over it, grabbed his leather jacket and made for the door.
"Why don't you give me a call when you find something; I'll be doing some research of my own with a bottle of beer and the local talent."
He closed the motel door behind him with a resounding bang – and woke up. The room was curtained close and dark; Lisa's arm was draped across his chest. A heavy, constraining weight, even though she was so slight. He tried to take a deep breath, failed.
Every night was the same. He and Lisa would have sex –always passionate and heartfelt, he would allow it to overwhelm him with physical sensation, enabling him to fall asleep afterwards having lost himself in that little death – only to dream about Sam. Always Sam.
Tonight's dream had been a good one really, built from a happy memory, but it still left him feeling as though there was a silver dagger lodged in his chest. Gently he moved still-sleeping Lisa's arm and swung his bare legs over the edge of the bed. He sat very still for a moment, resting his head in both hands. He didn't need to look at the clock; he knew it would be somewhere around 4am. It was always around this time that he would wake, regardless of whether the dreams were good or bad. He was lucky if he got three or four hours sleep these days; in fact, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had more rest than that in the last few years, outside of being unconscious from injuries, or very occasionally, passed out after a night of serious drinking. Not even, he supposed wryly – when he'd been dead. Especially not when he had been dead.
He silently pulled on underwear, an old singlet and his grey sweat pants, and quietly closed the bedroom door behind him. He exited the small house barefoot and sat on the porch under the pale silver eye of the moon (waning, gibbous – Sam's voice helpfully informed him inside his head) to pull on his boots. In spite of his attempts to embrace a normal life, he still hadn't got round to buying anything as civilian as a pair of trainers. It was making him feel vulnerable enough to be setting out each day for his run round the town without his gun tucked into the back of his pants. To forego his sturdy boots (complete with the small knife in its hidden inner sheath) would be a step too far for the ex-hunter, even though since he had arrived in Cicero, he had seen no sign of anything more deadly or threatening than the oversized twelve-year old bully at Ben's school. Or perhaps that brainless pit-bull the neighbour down the block doted on, that barked like it thought it was a Black Dog every time he and Ben walked by on their way to the park to play baseball or soccer.
Somehow Lisa put up with him, complete with all of his considerable baggage. Like the old habits he couldn't let go of – always sleeping with the big bowie knife under the pillow, in spite of the way her eyes had widened in fear when she first saw it; the drive to keep his body fit and ready to fight that found him every morning, whatever the weather, pounding the pavements and lakeside paths of Cicero for hours until every muscle ached and he was drowned in sweat; like the constant state of alertness he held himself in, despite the persistent dull quiet that seemed to be all that Jackson Township had to offer since the changelings had been destroyed all those years ago. By him and Sam.
Lisa even put up with how everything always came back to one thing. To Sam.
He had told her what happened in Stull Cemetery. Everything, though it was almost as hard for her to hear as it was for him to tell. He owed her that much, for taking him in – broken sad thing that he was, after. Castiel's touch had repaired his shattered face, saved the life that had been seeping away into the ground, trying to trickle through the dirt to follow his brother into the Pit, slipping away from him alongside the tears of blood that had slid slowly down his bruised cheeks. But not even an angel's touch could repair his broken soul.
That morning was no different from the hundred others since Sam was lost. Dean ran through the slowly lightening Indiana morning, through the pre-dawn still-moonlit streets, the faded grey spirit of a soldier escaped from some army boot camp. Which was, he supposed, not so very far from the truth. Dean Winchester had survived an invisible war that very few people were even aware had been fought at all. A veteran who had nobody to share experiences with, as virtually all his comrades in arms (so very few to begin with) were dead or gone. Only Bobby remained, but Bobby was in South Dakota, and Dean had promised Sam he would live a normal apple pie life with Lisa and Ben. The old hunter was not part of a normal life. It was probably a couple of months since Dean had spoken to his old friend, and though he wouldn't have admitted it, he was avoiding any contact. Talking to Bobby hurt. It was bad enough that he saw Sam everywhere, without adding reminders of all the other raw losses - memories of Ellen and Jo, Ash and Pamela, all the friends and allies fallen over the years of fighting.
Dad.
Dean smiled, but it was grim - bleak. He didn't need any new raising of Witnesses to help him remember all the dead he hadn't saved. He ran, his heavy boots thudding dully against the concrete paving slabs of Cicero's suburbia. His ghosts kept pace with him easily in the dark. He hadn't found any way to outrun them yet, but he kept trying. He knew he was sick. He knew how empty he was inside, how right Famine had been, and how much more empty he was now than he had been back then, when the third Horseman had looked deep into his soul. He was scoured out, a real Hollow Man (T S Elliot, Dean? Really? Hey, I read, Sammy…). Death would be a mercy, and at the back of his mind was the tiny frail hope that maybe he had garnered enough plus points in averting the Apocalypse for God to give him a place in that fucked up place called Heaven, instead of chucking him screaming back into Hell. Maybe.
But he had promised to live. And Dean Winchester might lie and cheat and steal and kill, but he always kept his promises.
It was the smell that alerted his hunter instincts. Over the scents of damp earth and still lake water ran a thread of dissonance, metallic, familiar and unmistakeable. Blood. He had been out there for nearly two hours and the sun was already starting to warm the air as it rose, glistening through the new leaves of the oaks as he crossed E226th Street where it ran along the edge of the Bear Slide Golf course - where he and his neighbour, Sid, played on Sunday mornings (yeah, me playing golf, Sammy, who'd've thought it?). He was making his way through the wooded margins of the Morse reservoir, threaded by several muddy creeks, when that scent of blood caused every sense to switch onto full alert. Skin pricking, he slowed to a more cautious pace, wishing he had brought his colt 1911 after all.
Then he heard the voices.
to be continued...
These are all short chapters so I'll post each installment quickly :D
Reviews and comments are all welcome!
