This my first (and possibly my only) foray into the world of fanfiction authorship. I wouldn't even call myself an "author" (that label is reserved for much more skilled, more committed people than I). Just a little thing that's been bouncing around for a while, begging to be put down on paper. Would love to know what you all think!

Thank you!

Best,

Elena

P.S. - Oh, I think I'm supposed to put some sort of disclaimer? I would think that's a given, but...I guess I need to check the rules again, sorry. SO just in case: I do not own the rights (intellectual or otherwise) to Supernatural the show, the characters, the plotlines...just playing nicely with what Kripke and others have provided over the years.

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It's not how he thought it would be.

He's seen the movies. He's spent the better portion of his life asking questions of people who went or are going through the same thing. He knows what to expect.

Except that he doesn't.

Apparently there is no rule. No script your brain follows. All bets are off.

Because he doesn't get angry. He doesn't yell. He doesn't stop them from taking him. He doesn't stop life (because it just keeps going). He doesn't question or deny. He doesn't feel guilty.

What he does feel and when he feels it takes him more by surprise than anything. In fact, he thinks his brain is more focused on the surprise than anything else.

It's really quick. Like, really, really quick. And so normal—or at least normal for Winchesters. They're fighting something—Dean doesn't remember what it was—and they're both fine. He and Sam are throwing punches, slashing knives, whirling around each other and the thing in the coordinated dance that they've perfected through the years. The thing's human, Dean remembers. Or at least looks like a human, and it knocked their guns clear across the room three seconds after he and Sam burst through the door of the house (the old, decrepit house at night, of course, and also, they really needed to bungee cord those guns already).

It doesn't even take that long. One second Sam has it pinned against the wall, putrid breath (judging by Sam's grimace, the dork) huffing in his face. Dean goes in with the long knife. In an instant it has Sam overpowered (for a mere second) and it drops to the ground like a cartoon iron anvil. Except it's not just dropping for no reason. Apparently the wall Sam had him pinned against is also the same wall his and Sam's guns were thrown against in the beginning. But neither of them realized that (I mean, who would?), although it doesn't really matter because Dean doesn't even slow down. Just changes the trajectory of his knife hand and prepares for a tackle. It all happens in an instant, and by the time he can feel the knife burrowing into tissue that's way too tough to be human, warmth welling up over his hand, his ears are already ringing from the gunshot. He tears the knife out and slits its throat. Slits it deep, basically decapitates it. He rips the still warm gun out of the thing's lifeless fingers, even though he knows it's stupid because it's definitely dead now.

He's not even thinking it got his brother that badly. After all, how good of a shot is a thing with presumably little practice with firearms, curled up on the ground and given only a split second to aim?

Good enough, as it turns out.

Because as he turns to Sam and sees him already crumbling like a marionette with its strings cut, he knows deep down that the rapidly spreading red stain is way too close to his brother's heart for him to survive an ambulance ride.

Memory loss isn't a rule, either, apparently. He always thought (not that he thought about it) that it'd be like how they always seem to show it on TV—zoned out, like he was floating on a cloud because he couldn't process what was happening or all the feelings crap or whatever.

Nope. Definitely not like that. Dean remembers everything in vivid detail. He misses no moments.

Also not like the movies? No heart-wrenching, I-slept-with-your-prom-date confessional goodbye. Dean doesn't catch Sam before his body thuds to the floor (because his brother is freaking Gullivan) and as Dean pulls him close and scrambles at his throat, the pulse he barely feels is thready and inconsistent. Sam's eyes aren't even open.

He's yelling his brother's name and pressing his hand to Sam's chest—to the freaking hole leaking his baby brother's life all over his hands—for all he's worth while trying to simultaneously thread his fingers through his hair because that always woke him up as a kid (and man, did it annoy him) but he can't because he only has two hands.

Sam never opens his eyes and eventually Dean can't feel a pulse, no matter how hard he presses his fingers against his brother's (cold) throat.

And Dean doesn't feel that anger or denial or shock. He doesn't feel that guilt.

All he feels is sadness.

Soul-crushing sadness. The type of sadness that's enough to drive someone mad, the type you can feel reverberating throughout your body, grinding your bones to jello and shooting pain signals to your brain. It's a scary vacuum of weariness and the only thing close enough to what he's feeling now is what he felt when Dad died. Except it's worse. So much worse because this is Sam.

And Dean's brain is still taking in every little detail. The puddle of red on the floor, Sam's white face, his limp hands, his stupid hair all slicked with blood from Dean's hands, the copper smell permeating the air that makes Dean gag, and the cold. Not cold cold, not yet, because right now Sam's just cold from shock. And Dean can't believe how logical he can think until he realizes that he's so not being logical.

What he is doing is clutching his little brother to him, asking him to wake up—no, begging him to wake up because Sam would never ignore begging from his older brother. Orders he'd ignore, yes, but never begging.

But he's ignoring them now, apparently, and Dean honestly thinks he's having a heart attack, the pain and sense of suffocation is too much, can't be just an emotions thing.

He has just enough awareness to register that he's hugging and rocking Sam, and then all of a sudden he's sobbing. He's crying harder than he can ever remember crying and he can't stop. He can't stop, and he really needs to because his muscles hurt from the violent spasms of grief and his lungs can't draw in oxygen and this is happening.

No denial. No anger. No guilt. Just a ragged hole where his heart used to be and a suffocating void of darkness before him. A blanket of something that makes it hard to move, to think, to call an ambulance.

Somehow he does though. That's what he's supposed to do. That's what you're supposed to do in this situation (and again, what's with the logic?) and he doesn't even care what his dad would say about hospitals. Because Dad's not here and now neither is Sam. Not really. Not in the ways that count.

And he still can't see, can't breathe, can't stop crying, and holy crap there's no way it's humanely possible to feel this much pain.

His mom's there. Huh. Sam's pretty sure she shouldn't be here, but he can't think why.

She leans over him, blonde hair falling past her shoulders, tickling his face. She's smiling and Sam can't breathe she's so beautiful and warm and not dying. He's seen the two pictures they have of Mom, creased and supple from the hundreds of times it's been handled and folded, saved from the flames just by chance. That night when Sam was six months old, John had left his wallet and coat in the car after coming home from work. When Sam was little, he always loved looking at the photos, would badger Dean into showing him, would clamber onto his older brother's lap while Dean sighed and threw glances at John's quickly retreating back. Sam hasn't seen the pictures in a long time, but he remembers them. And the pictures are nothing compared to her in real life.

She's still smiling, oh so gently, and looking at him like he's the most wonderful thing in the world and like she has no other wish than to be there, right now, with him. He wants to smile at her, reach up and hug her, ask her where she's been, take her by the hand and pull her to Dean because his brother lost way more in that fire than Sam did. But for some reason he can't do any of those things. There's some sort of heavy blanket covering him, a fogginess that makes it so, so hard to move. He wonders if Dean spiked his post-workout Gatorade again. Dean likes to do that. Says they don't need to spend money to watch comedies at the movie theater when Sam's drunk.

A second or an hour later Sam refocuses and realizes his mom is running her fingers through his hair. He likes it. It's just a light touch; she's barely skimming her fingers over his scalp, making little pathways through the strands of hair (Jessica always said his hair was so thick she could mold it with her fingers). It's gentle and soothing and Sam zones out again.

Or at least he assumes he zones out because suddenly his mom is gone and he can hear a ticking sound.

That's weird.

They never stay in motels with anything but a digital clock because nowadays they're so much cheaper for motel owners than so-called "retro" clocks.

He's really not sure it's a clock now. It's not very rhythmic, he thinks. He tries to concentrate, tries to tell if the ticking is really getting faster and then slower and then faster again or if it's just his imagination, but he's too tired.

So he sleeps.

His mom's back again, so calm and friendly and safe, rubbing his arm, and for some reason Sam suddenly realizes where Dean got that look from. The look that no one but him ever sees, because it only happens when they're laughing at an inside joke in the impala or stitching each other up or yelling in each other's faces after a bad hunt or when Sam pulls into a particular gas station chain even though the station across the street is cheaper because he knows this one carries crappy individually-packaged pieces of pie.

The ticking is back. Although Sam decides it sounds more like a machine beeping. And that he must have been imagining the speeding up and slowing down, because it's going at a steady pace now.

It's kind of annoying, actually. Come to think of it.

He fights through the fog again, trying to figure out what that sound is because he's starting to think he's heard it before but also because he's feeling just the slightest bit ansy. He's not sure why, but for some reason he thinks something is...wrong, that's the word...and he should probably figure out what.

The fingers are back, running through his hair. Except they're not his mom's fingers. But he doesn't tense up, because somehow, this person's hands feel as safe, if not safer, than his mom's. That incessant beeping is still going, and man, it's annoying. Sam thinks he hears another sound now, over the beeping, a sound that he doesn't recognize, even though it makes him feel nervous and like he needs to be doing something. He struggles to focus a bit more. The sound's coming from right beside him, like right beside him. Huh. It kind of sounds like a kid choking on water (Sam spent a summer as a lifeguard at Stanford and he remembers one gawky pre-teen who jumped into the deep end, trying to impress a girl, except apparently he couldn't swim), except it keeps going and going and there's never any coughing (coughing is good…coughing gets the water out of your lungs…breathe kid…). Sam tries to move his hand, head, anything to help the kid who may be drowning. Goodness knows he doesn't want to be responsible for yet another death. But he's too tired. Sorry kid, he thinks. I'm so sorry. Sam goes to sleep.

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What did you guys think? Too cheesy? Not enough cheese? I'm curious. No pressure, and thanks again for dropping by!