Cathartic, a supernatural fanfic

"Cathartic"

Mystic25

Coda to 10x21. "Dark Dynasty"

Rating: T for language, violence, imagery.

A/N: I had to write this, it does have some dark undertones, but not for the sake of itself, for the sake of emotion.

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"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."

~John Steinbeck

"At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it."

― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

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"Dean.."

Her blood was spilled everywhere.

"Dean-"

Her legs hung loose and splayed over the edge of the tub, a knife hung in her limp fingers. Her red hair as bright as a dying sunset.

She fought, he knew she did- but was she scared-?

"Dean-" Sam made a vomit swallowing sound in his throat. "We have to get her out-, we can't leave her here-"

Dean's world funneled into a blur, as he stared at Charlie's lifelessness.

As he heard Sam's breathing behind him signaling his life. Noises inside him popped, a burning jolt seered the crux of his elbow like he was being branded by fires from the Pit. The Mark Pulsates like a heartbeat as he stares at Sam.

Trait-or,

Sam's eyes are a thick swirl of everything painful: horror, shock, guilt so deep that he could drown forever in it.

Trait-or.

"Dean, please-

Trait-or.

"You already left her here."

The pain in Sam's eyes are slashed open wider, pain worse than hurt flowed out of him like blood.

"You let Charlie take the Book," Dean stepped over the broken glass of Charlie's smashed tablet with his boots.

"I know-" Sam's voice was low, hung with grief and disbelief at the same time as he stared at Charlie's body in the tub.

"You dragged her into this mess, you let the Steins track her here-"

"I know-"

"You left here to DIE Sam."

"I know-" the words were barely a breath.

"Stop fucking saying that!"

Something inside Dean stopped. The heartbeat sped up, pumped through his veins.

Trait-or.

Dean lunged forward, throwing Sam off balance into the wall, pinning him so fast that Sam has no time to duck before Dean is landing hard punches left and right into his jaw. Dean felt the bones of Sam's jack crack and split apart Sam's lip.

"Dean don't-"

Sam's blood slid warm down Dean's knuckles.

Sam backed up, hands raised, "This isn't you man-"

Another punch slammed Sam's head hard back into the bathroom door, cracking the plaster apart.

Dean pinned him Sam's neck down with his arm, choking off his air.

Sam gasped for breath, one hand reaching up and wedging its way in-between Dean's grip and his throat. He pushed outwards hard, until he stood by the vanity mirror and Dean stood in the hallway.

"This is the Mark-"

Dean reared up in a guttural sound, he ran at Sam; Sam dodged his blows, pulling Dean's arm back behind his back. But Dean twisted back around and brought his knee up in a direct hit at Sam's abdomen that flung him backwards into the vanity and sent his back crashing into the mirror before he slid sideways in a hard fall to the floor.

Sam coughed breath that he didn't have rolling onto the shattered glass that had rained all over the floor. "This isn't going to bring her back-"

The heartbeat pounded louder in Dean's arm, it screamed, it cried for release, winding itself into the image of Charlie, innocent Charlie lying in a tub of her own blood because of –

Dean drew his boot back again and slammed it into Sam's chest, and again, hearing the splitting sound of a cracked rib on the third time, Sam grunted a strangled cry.

Dean pulled out his own hunting knife and it dropped at Sam's throat.

Sam screamed died up in a grunt in his throat, his eyes widened in startled shock, "Dean don't!-" blood dripped down his mouth when he talked. "You don't want to do this!-

Sam was shaking, Dean felt the vibrations against the knife against his throat; everything swirled bright red around him like a glass blower's kiln.

You can't take it back!-" Even as Sam tried to talk Dean from the unfathomable, Sam was scared that the unfathomable was seconds away from reality.

"I can't take back Charlie," Sam's swallow was caught up against the blade at his throat held by his brother, "You can't take back this- he breathed too hard for his injuries to take, he stared at Dean with every single moment of their life, of the grief of such a wasted life. "Please-you can't do this-to yourself-"

Dean's breathing sped up, outraced the pulsing of the Mark. The redness in his vision exploded everywhere he looked. He pulled the knife back and drew the blade up high; an animalistic scream tore at his throat as he swung it back down.

"No Dean don't, DON'T!-"

The blade made hard contact into the floor by Sam's head, shattering the metal in half, raining down on Sam.

And on Dean, when he pulled back with drowning man's breaths to hear Sam doing the same, eyes wide shaking, staring at the knife in Dean's hand, and up at Dean's face.

The broken blade fell out of Dean's hand with a clatter. He stumbled back on to his knees, his breaths deep and wide, Sam's sprawled legs inches from his own, his brother's blood thick up his nose lingering with the smell of Charlie's.

Dean clamored up on his feet in backward steps and found himself at the rim of the bathtub. Charlie's face was turned towards him, eyes closed, body limp. He touched her face with shaking hands sprayed with bits of Sam's blood.

"I'm sorry kiddo," his glided his fingers through her fiery red curls, dampening it with a mess of thick tears that burned down his face. He kissed her still warm skin, laying his forehead against hers. The Burning in Dean's arm stopped, and something more painful spilled into him, red was replaced by sharp agony, by horrible grief. "I'm so sorry-"

Sam laid where Dean had left him, drawn up on his elbows, the adrenaline and shock of the fight spilled out of him like a spiled tree, a rush of drowning sorrow replaced it, burning with each breath he took as he watched Dean hold Charlie's body against his own. Warm tears mixed with warm blood and traveled in rushes down his face, pain exploding like a dam, making the world too painful, too bright.

Sam lost himself to this brightness, senses thrown together in a slurry until he felt a rough shake on his shoulder and looked up and saw Dean standing once again over him, a hand extended out.

Sam closed his hand around Dean's reaching fingers and let himself be pulled to his feet by his brother with pain filled movements and a gasp at his broken rib. He watched Dean's eyes radiate into a higher level of sorrow when he heard it.

"It's okay, it's okay-" Sam's second 'okay' was borne away on a higher grunt as Dean threw his arm up over shoulder to take the weight off his injuries. He turned in two steps, traveling Dean with him in the movement, the gasp he had issued when he had first walked into the small, hot, little bathroom born again when he saw Charlie's lifeless and bleeding.

"Dean," Sam took a stumbled step forward. "Get her-" He moved again, nearly falling, but caught himself on the edge of the tub, pull himself off of Dean, lowering himself into a crouch, hand brushing Charlie's bright hair. "We have to get her-"

"I will," Dean grabbed Sam's shoulders to pull him back up. "Sam-"

"Help me-" Sam grabbed Charlie's arm and pulled it up over his, lifting with a strangled cry.

Dean shot forward and took Charlie's legs, supporting them until they cleared the edge of the tub and lifted her out and over the tile, carrying her out between them through the rain soaked, neon lit dirt to the car that was still parked in a crooked slant outside the motel.

They laid her in the back seat, head tucked into Dean's jacket like she had fallen asleep in a mingle of her blood and Sam's blood.

Sam crouched again by her head. "Charlie-" He watched her body absent of breath, replaying the last conversation in they had in his head over and over again, the sorrow he felt matched and exceeded only by the guilt that ate at him like a rabid dog. His rested his palm on her forehead and her hair that remained bright even in the darkness of the night. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen-" his voice swelled up, he threw his eyes up to try and find any stars in the sky. But the darkness was half drowned out by neon light and he looked back down to the car. He rubbed the side of her face with his thumb. "You were our family – we all loved you." He drew his head down flat on the seat and cried before he fell flat on the dirt and turned away in his grief, body burning in pain, the back of his head banging hard into the metal of the Impala over and over again.

"Sammy-"

"This is my fault…"

"Not now, c'mon," Dean grabbed at his shoulders and tried to pull him up, but Sam didn't move.

"I did this-"

"I did this too-" Dean's echoed words ended with a long sad look to the woman lying broken in the back seat. Dean had never had a little sister before, but Charlie became it for him somewhere. She had thrown herself at something that she knew would kill her, because she loved him, because she knew he loved her too. He stared back at Sam's battered face, his jaw already half swollen and ringed in dark blotched bruises, eyes as every bit as lost in hell as his.

Then will come the murder you won't survive…

"She did this for us Sammy. She loved us-" Dean's breath wanted to rip his throat apart, so damn tired of losing, so damn afraid of what he would lose next after this. "Now we gotta damn well prove to her we deserved it." He took one last look at Charlie's body before grabbing a hold of Sam's shoulders again. "C'mon-"

They climbed into the Impala and Dean drove it out with a growl from the hotel parking lot.

They found an empty field 30 miles into the morning light and parked the car at the edge of it; and erecting a pyre with an quick accuracy that was borne out of one damn time too many doing it.

The field was amazingly lush and green, boarded by wooded pine and covered in wild heather and yellow dandelions that looked like something open and airy that would exist in Middle Earth or Oz.

They had stolen sheets from a flapping laundry line and wrapped Charlie's body in them. Dean carried her this time, laying her down on the pyre, leaving her head exposed to the morning.

Sam approached the pyre with slow movements, the cuts on his face hidden as best they could under bits of butterfly bandages, the bruises darker.

Dean watched Sam as he lifted the sheet and laid a little battered copy of The Hobbit under Charlie's arm that he had found in her backpack. When Sam moved back Dean set her knife she earned in Oz in a grasp in her free hand.

They each kissed her one last time before covering her face up and tying a rope around the sheets, sprinkling salt, gasoline and holy water on her in turn.

Dean struck a match against the hard pine wood they had built the pyre out off. The look of too much damn sadness came to both of them before he tossed it onto the wood and it caught alight.

The fire rose high and orange and neither of them could hide the pained looks as the flames consume her. But they remained and watched in a Hunter's Wake that Charlie has more than deserved.

"Tell me this ends Dean," Sam watched a flame crawl higher over the sheets. He turned to face his brother, a thin line of scabbed blood at his throat. "Tell me we don't burry another damn that person we love, tell me-" he stopped short, watching his brother. "Tell me I don't burry you-"

"Charlie's dead Sam," Dean turned to face Sam, looking away from the flames. "And I tried to-" Dean couldn't bring himself to say it, to say the thing out loud that Cain had told him would be his final fate. "And it's up to us to make sure she didn't fight or die for nothing." He watched the flames again. "I have to make sure this, Curse, it becomes someone else, not mine-" he stared at Sam's dark bruises and the way he held himself so carefully because of his broken rib. "I'm going to burn it out Sam, use every bit of rage it creates in me into finding every single Stein out there and tear them apart, doing it individually tendon by tendon for what they did to her-" Dean turned once more to the pyre. "She was family Sam – family deserves better than this."

They stood through the morning while the flames rose higher, carrying away the life of a friend up into the sky.

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"Sam and Dean are like my brothers; I love them…"

~Charlie Bradbury

"Supernatural": Episode: "Dark Dynasty"

In Memory

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Can't really say anything…except, thank you Felicia and Charlie for making me like the idea of a Winchester Sister.

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