"Mountains"
Radical Face

lyrics used belong to the song Mountains by Radical Face, no copy right infringement intended, ever.

I was just a boy

Sam huffed out a sigh, rubbing the cloth between his fingers, worn and warming through the receptive friction. But he couldn't stop. It filled something up inside him, an almost ache, an almost joy, something great and lonely. The blue was surreal, the kind of blue you only see in dreams, it seemed to glow, to come off as dust fragments in the air.

Or he was tired.

It was probably because he was tired. He hadn't slept in...what? Three days? Four?

Sam couldn't remember. He glanced out of the window at the dark warehouse, how long had it been?

Shouldn't Dean have been back by now?

My father seemed a mountain then

They'd returned to Dad's storage, eventually. They'd wanted to see if there really was anything useful for this... this "war", or if the only leverage they had was their status as vessels. They had spent many nights debating it with Bobby, back and forth about if it was being watched by angels or not, and Cas wasn't around, still on his search for his father, so they'd had to figure it out by themselves.

Eventually they'd decided the angels wouldn't think they were stupid enough to go back.

Hopefully that was the case.

With a voice that could shake the seas

Sam was just about to throw the fabric down in favor of backing up his missing brother, but already, in the dark outside the window, a figure was approaching, familiar, and hunched against the light wind and rain. Before, about an hour ago, Dean had found and grabbed the blanket, had brought it back and tossed it at Sam through the window. He'd done so indifferently, although Sam knew it mattered, knew that something inside Dean was impossibly relieved when Sam recognized it, held it up in disbelief. Dean had retreated again, on the search for something actually helpful, not a surprise memento, not nostalgia soft and warm and faded blues.

My mother's ghost hung across his shoulders

Dean got in, put a box in the back seat, shrugged off Sam's inquiries about the usefulness of the venture, and started the car. He was silent, but not in the disappointed way, although it was obvious there wasn't anything particularly amazing, but in a way that leveled quiet shock and an almost loneliness, and Sam knew better to pry, was already trying to guess at what it was.

It wasn't hard.

It was about Dad. Something in there had surprised Dean, but not enough for him to mention it to Sam.

Sam looked at the child's blanket in his lap, the one corner tarnished black and plastic by raging heat.

By fire.

And he said she was still watching over me

Sam was just tired enough, and the blanket was just forgotten enough, just important enough, that it was like a curveball on his mind. It had brought back memories he didn't know he'd had, soft ones, gentle ones. Old ones.

Ones that could be dreams he'd imagined as a child to fill the absence of a mother.

His thumb worried the silken side again as he contemplated it.

The stitches that had been pressed in to spell an imperfect rendition of his name.

It made something old and sad awaken in him, and the rain pelted down and the silence bore into their bones because Dean was too out of it to turn on the radio.

My brother was home

Meeting Lucifer had been painful and messed up and wrong. So wrong.

And he'd been alone, and that had been why Lucifer had come, because he and Dean weren't talking.

And Sam was far away and his name was Kent or Clark or oh, Keith.

It had been Keith.

And Lucifer had wanted to take advantage of it and it made Sam so upset.

Something inside him raged almost quietly, but it churned like boiling water when he thought about it, refused to acknowledge it.

Refused to look at the blue memory wrapped softly in his bag.

But now he and Dean were back together.

Right?

Just returned on army leave

And he tried not to think about Lucifer, tried so hard. But when the silence was deafening, when he sat on the edge of his bed and it was eleven at night and Dean was taking a shower because they were all filled up on aches and sores and cuts and wounds, the emotions wiggled in, between the fingers pressed to his temple, cupping his face.

And Dean was trying, trying so hard, to trust him, and he knew he'd need to tell Dean at some point but how could he find the words?

How could he tell Dean when he couldn't even begin to admit it to himself?

Told his stories with a distant stare

And so Sam turned to Castiel, obsessed with his hunt, the God he could not find, would not find, and tried to find the words in an angel that was finding himself more lost than the brothers.

So Sam found no words, and the blanket lay wedged in his pack, stowed away just enough that he wouldn't resent it enough to toss it, but just far away enough that it was still a quiet douse of shock when he was searching for his knife or cards or an obscure booklet on witch charms. That it froze him and churned like sour laughter in his stomach.

And he would promise himself anew he'd get rid of it, but he'd always forget.

And as it snowed

It happened on a highway. An empty highway, in terms of life.

An erased highway, in terms of hail.

Dean was glaring at the windshield, or through it perhaps, because he'd never glare at his baby, at the ice attempting to encase them, ricocheting off the top in a very unreassuring manner.

And they would be stuck there for hours, and Sam could feel the silence pressing in, the thoughts he didn't want to think, because the radio couldn't connect through the storm.

And so, in an attempt to offset the quiet that pursued him, he'd dug through his bag for a pack of playing cards.

And his hand met soft sweet silk, blue unlike the sky or sea and rich and light all at once.

The wind was howling through the trees

"Lucifer visited me in my dreams."

The preamble that he'd rehearsed - or had attempted to rehearse - did not arrive, stuck behind them in the miles of snow, and so the words he'd held in since reuniting, since that terrible nightmare where devil dressed as Jess was remembered, spilled out black across the white that encased them.

Dean was furious at first, as he had the right to be.

But Sam had suddenly found it, the memory locked away too tight in a child's thoughts, the one that was sad and aching and he'd thought had been of his mother but how wrong.

How wrong he had been, and so it had been terrible when Lucifer revealed himself.

If only because deep down Sam already knew him.

And I spent my night just listening by the fire

And Dean doesn't believe him at first, refuses, because there is a hurt at those words that he could have failed, failed so irrevocably, in his care-taking of Sam, that the devil had sang lullabies to his brother and he'd never known.

And Sam had never known.

And he's beginning to think that not even Lucifer knows.

And he's trying to remember it all at once, all these things he hasn't known but knows irrevocably, obviously, completely and utterly.

And Dean is holding the blue between his hands, and the ice is cold and he feels colder still, because their father had saved things from the fire that night.

That night when they had fled, Dean does not remember anything surviving but the clothes off their back and the impala, and yet there had been an entire box of things from home, some broken or melted or scarred by ash in places, but memories nonetheless.

And the blue blanket, so beloved by one Samuel Winchester, had survived, albeit with the crusted corner of fire too close.

And etched into it in steady but wary cursive was Samuel.

My hands move the creases from my brow

When they get to a hotel, finally, finally, the silence is unshakable. There are no words from Dean, a revelation that he hates, but he has promised to trust Sam and so he will try, against every agony in his being.

And The silence is greater and more terrible than all the times before it, and yet Sam is filled with relief, as if the silence had heralded the return of distant memory, and so now, now that he knew that truth that had reemerged, from deep and long ago, the silence was content.

The silence sang him to sleep in place of a person, almost as golden, almost as sweet.

Soft as a breath

And when John Winchester had been gone and would be gone for many nights, and they were not at Bobby's, and Dean was asleep, it happened.

Sometimes, Sam, small and afraid, although he knew not then why, would wake in the middle of the night.

And lay there, heart beating, a hummingbird trapped under his ribcage, tiny and small and innocent.

And it would come.

He could never see it.

Not at first.

But something gentle would caress him, would stroke him back to sleep.

It's like a feather

He caught sight of it once, from the corner of his eye.

Two years had passed since the first encounter, it had been silent all this time, never spoke a word, and for the longest time, Sam hadn't dared speak, either.

But finally his curiosity came, as it would, always would, and he dared to ask.

And the petting paused, and as it departed, he saw the barest flutter of a feather, a wing, flash by his nightstand.

And he mourned it's absence and fell asleep in tears.

I dreamed of a lonely voice that night

And that night it sang to him.

On the barest edges of his dream, it stayed, always just out of reach, out of sight, always just close enough that he could nearly feel it, it was achingly nearly enough.

And it sang, that haunting way that angels should sing, though he had no words for what it was then.

And for months, all it did was sing away the nightmares, and leave him to ache in the fields of whatever dream held him,

and leave him come morning, to memories that would fade as quicksilver as he woke.

Quiet as death

And then, one night, before he went to bed, he prayed.

The first night he prayed, and indeed, the beginning of much of the rest of his life - until he and his brother discovered angels were not so pure in plots or plans.

And that night, he prayed, though it was for his brother and father, away on a hunt he was not supposed to know about.

And he sat for many minutes before lying down to sleep, staring at the moon as if to dare it contradict him.

And when he fell asleep, the dream was silent.

And when he woke, his remembered just long enough that something was wrong before he heard Dean open the door and he sprang from his bed in delight and the dream trickled away as the night did on sun-tipped sails.

Outside my window

And then, finally, after a month of silent dreams, something inside him remembered the almost friend, and he prayed for their return.

And he prayed for their safety, just as he did for Dean and his father and Bobby and the pastor.

And that night, when he fell asleep, it was not silent, but great, soft tears billowed through his dreams, the shadow of that almost friend farther now, and cast him on stormy waves, and so he cried for his friend, and did not know what hurt it so, and called out to nothingness.

And when he woke up, he remembered the dream, and felt something worried deep inside.

And the next night, he did not pray. He lay, worrying over it again and again, and by the time he fell asleep he had forgotten.

It sang a sad and lovely tune

And it spoke to him then.

Softly, at first, and it had to stop because he began to cry, and the dream languished in his tears, and though this invisible friend would not let itself be seen, it gently hugged him from behind, and waited until he had stopped.

And it cried, too, but less than last time, and it told him gently that it had to go away, because he prayed and it could not stay.

And he begged it, he begged it not to go, promised to never pray again.

And it laughed quietly as it cried, and something inside Sam was great and sad and aching at that.

And it said it loved him, and to never stop praying, to redeem them both, and then it said goodbye.

Clear as a bell

For a year it did not return, and Sam did not dream.

And every night he prayed for their redemption.

And every night, he pulled blue cloth close round his body, as if to squeeze out the ache and remember the softness of unseen fingers carding through his hair and soft sweet song echoing through his dreams.

And so it came that one day, Sam was told in class - for he had started school just recently - that his brother was in the hospital and he would have to walk home.

and that night, alone and terrified, he did not pray, could not pray, for he'd done so every night and always for his brother, and always for his father, and always for his friend.

And if Dean died Sam did not know what he would do.

Soft as a shiver

It came, that night, to soothe him. To hold him close and let their tears meld silver lakes through the dream, and sing to him and apologize for leaving him alone and promise him the world.

Anything, anything, it would promise, anything so that you will not cry.

And Sam knew it could not heal Dean, but he asked for that anyways.

But he could not stop crying, asking why it would leave him

did it not like him anymore?

And there the dream dissolved - for it began to weep and break and ache so much that the dream fell apart, and Sam felt it dissipate through his fingers, it apologizing over and over again.

It said, I want you all the time

It said, I want you all the time

And it never came again.

Goodbye bad thoughts

Sam had waited about another week before Lucifer reappeared.

He was surprised, honestly.

And he sat on the edge of this dreamscape bed, identical to the one in the hotel, and held a small blue blanket between his hands, not daring to look up.

Afraid, terrified, that he was wrong, yes, but so much more afraid that he was right.

Because what would it mean?

What would happen?

"Sam?"

And that voice was lilting, but it wasn't the voice of his friend, but his friend had not had a corporeal form.

And Sam didn't know, didn't know anything.

But in that moment, when he looked up and met Lucifer's wary, calculating gaze, the fear fell away.

A cool rage, calamity and calm, sudden hummed in him.

"Do you remember, Lucifer?"

I'm safe under covers

Lucifer didn't remember.

But something inside him must have, something soft and pained and aching sparked.

Sam just let the emotions out, free to drag him down or release him, and indeed, they were confused and they did both.

"Sam, I don't think -"

But it has been too long, and Sam knows already that pain does not fade with time, it festers, ripens quietly.

And so he remembers freshly the abandonment, and does not condone it, and aches anew.

It comes out hoarsely, just petulant enough as would a child.

"You promised me anything."

So goodbye bad thoughts

When Lucifer remembers, it is painful for them both.

Whatever tiny bits of Lucifer's Grace he could stuff through the bars of the cage had had to be enough to prepare demons for the coming apocalypse.

Somehow, some way, one had found itself at Sam's bedside.

And began a love that could not be undone, and began a pain more great and terrible and lonely and aching than either could take.

So they had forgotten, as was safer, as was kinder to them both.

"Sam." And it's said anew, as if recognizing an old friend, an old love.

An old ache.

'Cause I'm safe under covers

"Please." Sam begged Lucifer, for what they both hoped would be last and final time.

Such agony was clogging up these old wounds, and Sam was small again, in this dream he could not help it, because if Lucifer refused then he would still fight with every bone in his body, but for now, for just this moment he could take comfort in being held close and safe and warm and this, this ache and joy all as one as he could only feel in Lucifer's arms.

"Sam." Lucifer whispered reverently to Sam's head, pressed into his collar as would every child who seeks to find safety, tiny hands wrapped around his neck as they never had before, knowing now not to let go, unwilling to ever lose him again.

And perhaps he feels the same.

"Lucifer, please." And these tears are hot and fresh, and they burrow into Lucifer's borrowed skin just as easily in dream as they would in flesh.

Now I can see you again

"Anything," The angel whispers.