"Miles to Go."
Mystic25
Summary: Tag to "Adventures in Babysitting." Driving alone in the dark, with your brother sleeping beside you, 4 weeks after. What exists in that moment.
Rating: T for some language
A/N: Great episode, so very great, and touching. This is my homage to it.
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"You're my brother; there's nothing that I wouldn't do for you."
~'Sam Winchester' "Supernatural"
"The woods are lovely; dark and deep, but I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep."
~Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
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The night was like its own creature, a deep darkness that swathed the red car in its blackness like claws. The car wasn't the Impala, so it didn't know well enough to protect those that sat inside it from the madness outside of it.
But she tried her best, was a dependable thing, in a time when dependable things were sifting like too small grains of sand from a sieve.
In that second when Sam had started to move, to shift towards the door, Dean thought for one insane second that his brother was going to open it, and hurl himself out into that blackness at 65 miles an hour. Why, Dean couldn't say, because he hadn't been able to think of a lot of things clearly in the last month – most likely due to the whiskey, and the beer, and the whole not sleeping thing.
But, if Dean went back to a place that he couldn't think about yet, he knew the real reason why he was running on barely anything. He watched Sam settle his – what Chrissy had called his 'size of a car' sized body against the door, eyes closing, a breath of a sigh escaping.
Sam seemed to deflate, the starkness of a sterile bandage stiff and there against his neck, along with drying blood. Dean noticed all this as he watched him in glances from the road.
He'd almost lost his brother.
That thought stuck out in his mind first –as it always did.
Something like that coming on the heels of what had been endured 31 days 10 hours, and 20 minutes ago – it had been like ripping Dean's lungs out of his chest and having someone screaming at him to breathe.
Everything had dulled so much in that last month – but it also never burned with such piercing clarity. It was one of the worst oxymoron's, and even more worse to experience.
They barely spoke two words to each other, not to scream, or even cry. Not even Sam, who was more open about things; there wasn't even energy to do that. They barely got off the couch to anything, they both just sat there, not lost in a cause, or even a haze - just lost.
Three weeks into it they finally were able to regroup, to track down Bobby's last wish, a random set of numbers – that of course, would lead to a random set of monsters.
Monsters who decided to try and eat his brother.
The last member of his family.
The only thing he had left.
And thinking about that – tore the smile away from Dean at seeing his brother, there, beside him, and safe- tore it to pieces. Because they were the last two, there was no one else.
Dean's face tore into something painful, it rippled up his whole being. He bit his lip so hard it would have bled if he added anymore pressure. He drove like this shaking his head, blinking against the mistiness that was suddenly covering his eyes.
Well I know the feeling
Of finding yourself stuck out on the ledge
And there ain't no healing
From cutting yourself with the jagged edge
He remembers what Bobby's voice sounds like, with such clarity it's like such a knife wound, over 30 years of memories hitting him all at once. Remembering every moment where he had molded he and Sam into who they were.
That included the broken, torn, shittiness that gave them so many scars, but it also included the reason they were standing there at all.
And, that hurt so damn bad to know, in such a fucking quiet silence with only the tears Dean finally let himself drop for company. It had taken him four weeks to cry – in the dark, in a car that didn't belong to him. Four weeks after he had another moment that had taken it upon itself to knock him sideways.
Chrissy had called him a old man – and Dean was feeling it now, feeling both too old to feel so young, and too young to feel so old.
Sam was asleep – Sam was a 29 year old big as a car grown ass man, but Sam was asleep. It was a mantra Dean kept in his head to keep this mess down – so he wouldn't wake him up. It was his last bit of sanity to cling too. To be a big brother, to watch out for Sam, to protect him, like Dad taught him too, like Bobby –
The next round of biting made Dean's lip bleed. He swallowed the thick warm saltiness down. He could barely see now through the swirls of color running liquid through his eyes.
He breathed, he made a sound that would have been a whimper if he admitted that's what it was. But, instead he clutched the steering wheel tighter.
He turned when he felt something pressing on him.
He blinked, and looked –
At the hand resting on his arm, grasping it.
I'm telling you that
It's never that bad
Take it from someone whose been where you're at
Laid out on the floor
And you're not sure
You can take this anymore
He followed that grasp, up the arm,
And up to his brother's face.
Sam was holding to his arm, watching, seeing all the tears in Dean's eyes, all over his face. But, not once did he call him out on it.
Well everybody's hit the bottom
And everybody's been forgotten
When everybody's tired of being alone
Sam just let his hand rest there, swallowing a heavy breath, blinking once, blinking harder when all Dean could do was offer him such a weighted smile that Sam could hear it breaking.
Yeah everybody's been abandoned
And left a little empty handed
So if you're out there barely hanging on
He grasped Dean's arm through all the layers, laying it there as some kind of proof – as something that was trying too hard to remember anything else.
Just give it one more try
To a lullaby
And turn this up on the radio
If you can hear me now
I'm reaching out
To let you know that you're not alone
Sam's neck burned like fire, his muscles ached. But, seeing Dean like this – Dean never did this, not unless something was so much that the hurt had nowhere else to go but out.
It made Sam hurt so much more.
They always had each other; but now they only had each other.
And you can't tell I'm scared as hell
Cause I can't get you on the telephone
Bobby was gone, he was dead. There was only Sam now, literally and completely. Dean had yet to say that to anyone accept his thoughts. But that didn't make it less real. Especially when three days had passed and Dean had driven with a 14-year-old girl with the gnawing fear that Sam would be dead, 31 days after Bobby – it would have ended Dean – there would be no heaven, hell even no hell, there would be nothing but an ache that not even death would end it.
His entire existence was now sitting beside him.
And it was crushing his soul with the weight of such a singularity.
"Dean-"
Sam had yet to move his hand from Dean's arm; his eyes trying to convey what couldn't be voiced because it was veiled behind everything else. But even that was being lost to something swallowing and painful.
"Go back to sleep Sam," Dean tried to shrug this off as the light thing that it wasn't.
"Dean-" Sam tried again, inflecting just a little more.
But, all it did was make Dean raise an arm and squeeze him on the back of the neck. "I'm good man, I mean it. Go to sleep."
So just close your eyes
Dean wasn't shy about caring about Sam; but it wasn't normally so completely open about it. Not when they were just sitting there – not unless he was completely broken as well.
"I'm still here man." The hand didn't squeeze, but it was still there, it hadn't moved.
Well honey here comes a lullaby
"I know Sammy."
Dean had to blink again, because they were chick flicking it up all over the car. It was so stupid and girly, and dumb, and painful, and needed.
Your very own lullaby
"I mean it." Sam's voice was weighed down, and tired, so damn tired.
Dean knew the sound, because he was tired too. They had both fought and hurt too much, it was all too much. Dean wanted to get out, to stop. But he couldn't. It was too late.
So he sat there, and he felt. The pain, the loneliness, the weight, the broken pieces of shit feeling – the mirror image of it sitting beside him, reflecting him.
Knowing him.
Well honey here comes a lullaby
"I know."
Your very own lullaby.
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In Memory of "Robert 'Bobby' Singer."
Supernatural Seasons 2-7.
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End.
This was such an in depth episode..
Hope I did it justice.
and NOOO Bobby!…Okay, feel slightly better
That part about Dean thinking that Sam was going to roll out of the car – that's what I really thought. I was like: 'dude, what the hell? Is he going to just TUMBLE out?' then I realized 'oh he's trying to SLEEP…stuipid!'
The lyrics are from "Lullaby" by: Nickelback.
R/R please.
Mystic.