Disclaimer: Listen, if I owned Supernatural you'd be staring at this shit on the screen every week. Be thankful I don't. No copyright infringement intended blah blah blah just writing for funsies blah blah blah. Blah. Everything belongs to Kripke. Not my soul, though; he can't have that. :P
A/N: I wrote the first paragraph before actually listening to the song the title was derived from. See, I had heard of the song before, but had never actually gotten a chance to listen to it. It's pretty freaking awesome, actually, and really inspired the rest of the ficlet for me. So, enjoy! Unbeta'd, as per usual.
Summary: Pre-series. Dean is on his way to collect Sam and deliver him from normalcy.
Walking Wounded
"scared, paired walking soldiers.
We're all wounded anyway
In our respective ways
Scientists they couldn't fix me
I'm so tired of getting out of bed..."
--The Walking Wounded by Bayside
Dean's wounds are deep and raw. They are the kinds of wounds you cannot see right away, even when you're looking real hard. They lie in wait beneath the surface, rearing their heads ugly and vicious when things don't quite bend his way.
Time was slow back when he and Sammy were still the same height. Words moved from their mouths without such sense of urgency. Moments were gladly wasted on trivial things, because those were the things that anchored them to each other. Reading comics, playing stupid games, watching peeps explode in microwaves across the country (and that one never got old).
Dean was better at hiding back then; he had his baby brother to worry about, and almost no energy left to spend on himself. Now all he seems to have is energy. Energy and time, rolling out under his tires in the form of cracked highway tarmac.
He can't even deal with himself for too long, though, so he's looking for Sammy. Looking for something to connect him to the earth, and to himself. There needs to be something here that he can grab hold of to calm the quiet gasping of his breath.
In the vast expanse behind him a live wire skips excitedly across a dark road, and a fire burns the night into mourning. The world is suddenly bright and new and frightening, and all too familiar.