Out of Touch
K Hanna Korossy
He was flying, unfettered by gravity, and the height was exhilarating instead of terrifying. He could go anywhere.
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Ironically, he'd been the one to warn Sam.
"Don't forget, no matter what happens, you don't touch it. If it gets away, it gets away. Killing it isn't worth going for a ride on the crazy train." Dean strapped on his wrist sheaths but his eyes were intent on his brother.
Sam nodded, slipping his knife into his belt, checking his gun. "You ready?" he said tersely.
Dean just gave him a grin.
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So many colors he hadn't seen, that no human eye could have ever seen. So many patterns, links, layers he'd been blind to before.
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The reports had been vague, people going crazy in unusual numbers in a northern suburb of Chicago. There were any number of candidates for causes, some of them not supernatural. But the sulfur at the homes and workplaces was unmistakable.
The Grand Duke of Hell had gotten out through the open gate in a Wyoming cemetery.
Sam had been the one to narrow it down to Alocer based on the rants of the local demons fleeing the area in fear. Dean, meanwhile, had listened to the newly christened lunatics, and learned where the real danger lay: in the demon's touch.
In the end, it didn't help.
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The music made him weep. So far beyond anything his beloved bands could have ever imagined, it slipped through his soul and seared his senses with its beauty.
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He looked like an old soldier on a horse, something like how Sam had always imagined Don Quixote. The leonine face was the one jarring note…until it turned its head and the glowing pale eyes skewered Sam.
Dean pulled the Colt, while Sam began reciting the banishment under his breath, the fallback plan, while trying not to look at those burning eyes.
Dean's yell brought his head up. Alocer had somehow dismounted and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, knocking the Colt aside with a flick of its wrist. Dean was sprawled on the ground, screaming at Sam as the demon changed its course and bore down on the one Winchester still standing.
Sam didn't see Dean get up, too busy jumping out of the way while he pulled his knife. Didn't see Dean at all until his brother was between him and the demon, Alocer's reaching hand on his neck. When Dean froze, body taut, hazel eyes going completely blank.
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He saw them all, everyone he'd ever known, in Heaven and in Hell and in their small, safe lives still on Earth. Saw their pasts and futures and the ties between them and everyone else like colored silken threads. Saw all the connections, and marveled.
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Dean—and, oddly, Alocer—didn't move in the long seconds while Sam dove for the Colt and came up firing.
The flame in the eyes that turned toward him seemed to eat away its face, than the long, lean body. With a small, surprised gasp, Alocer died, writhing away into nothing.
Then Dean echoed his gasp and fell as if he'd been the one shot.
Sam knew what he'd find even as he chanted denials to himself. When he turned his brother over with careful hands, Dean stared back at him with unseeing eyes, mouth moving around incomprehensible syllables, and Sam fought hard not to cry.
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He understood it all. The Plan: Hell's intentions; Heaven's counterpoints. Some things were hidden even from him, but he saw the parries and thrusts, the behind-the-curtains maneuvering and the victories that looked like losses. And he got it.
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Sam carried him home. Or, at least, that day's home.
He tried to do triage, clean his brother up, talk to him. But Dean's body had curled in on itself, flinching at every sound and touch, pulled as far inside as he could go. Worst of all, crushing despair packed the eyes that had once been vacant.
No matter how Sam tried to soothe, Dean shied away from him. Disappearing into his fear, meaningless pleas and exhortations spilling from his lips as he sought to escape something Sam couldn't see.
God help him, he had preferred the blankness.
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One moment he'd had it all, such freedom and knowledge. He could protect all he loved, no longer had anything to fear, struggled with no unknowns. Every cell of his body and soul was alive.
And then it was all gone.
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The world howled around him.
It was too cold and too hot, burning bright and fiercely loud. His clothing scoured his skin, and his ears threatened to bleed. He couldn't open his eyes for the harsh light.
He was trapped, back inside his fragile little shell of terror and helplessness and constant exhausting struggle. And deep in the hard, frigid darkness of his flesh prison, he buckled and broke.
He screamed for the loss, but all his overloaded senses could hear was moans.
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Gone…
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Sam was pretty sure he was going crazy, too.
Hours had passed, and no matter what he did, Dean's only response was to keen and try to pull even more tightly into himself. His muscles had to be ready to snap, but that was the least of their problems now. Dean was imploding under the pressure of whatever horrors he'd seen, and his cries of pain and terror threatened Sam's insanity, too.
And then Dean whimpered, and Sam couldn't bear it anymore. If Dean's shields were gone, Sam would just have to be his for him.
He climbed on the bed, lying down in front of Dean, then wrapped himself around his shaking brother. Arms and legs and even head folded around the elder Winchester, cocooning him tightly enough that Dean was forced partially out of his curl. Just as he stiffened again.
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Black and cold and deafening and bereft, all the peace and good and safety gone, too much, too much, s' too much…
And then…it wasn't.
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"I know it's bad, I know, but just hang on for me, okay? It'll get better, I promise. And I'm here, Dean. I'm here. I won't let it have you. Not after everything. We're stronger than this, right? Just hang on…"
At first too loud, too grating. His body felt crushed, his lungs in a vise, and he was too hot. But beyond the physical, there was…something else here, something comforting even in the way fingers dug into his back and the smell of sweat and damp flannel invaded his sinuses and soft strands tickled his temple. Temperature stabilizing to too-warm body heat and rambling noise clogging his ears.
"I've got you. I've got you, Dean. Whatever it is, you can beat this. We can beat it. Let me help you. I'm right here, man."
What he'd lost was indescribable and made him want to scream for the loss. But what he had here…that was priceless in its imperfection.
And as he had so many times in the past, Dean let go of what once had been and clung to what he still had left. He clumsily wrapped his own arms around his brother, and finally found contentment.
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The Grand Duke of Hell would never have understood such a trade, some things beyond even its vast comprehension.
But Dean Winchester…he thought it was a pretty good deal.
The End