Title: Stillness
Summary: Nothing mattered. Not in this stillness, not in this night, not when it was just him and Dean in two nondescript beds, alone and together, united and separated.
A/N: I wrote this early S3. There are no specific spoilers, but vague references to Dean's deal. This is a quiet piece--just Sam introspection and it's probably all wrong by now but whatever. I still like to try to get into Sam's head since the show seems determined to not show us. Beta'ed by geminigrl11 but a long time ago--I doubt she even remembers! sendintheclowns gave it a good once over as well as well as pushing me to post :) Since she had to shovel snow twice today, I figured I'd take pity on her and post already.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
It was quiet.
The stillness was pervasive, and the room reverberated with it. It stretched and expanded, filling the corners of the room with a placidity too encompassing to be ignored. It left no nook unattended, no cranny unsaturated. It covered and soaked until Sam didn't know where he began and the stillness ended.
The lights were off, and the room was shrouded in a gauzy darkness. A faint flow filtered softly through the curtains from the artificial lights of the world outside, kept at bay by the deadbolt and chain. It was far too early or much too late, Sam wasn't sure which anymore. He could have turned his head, look at the display on the clock situated between the twin beds, but he didn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to disturb the stillness that seemed to trap him where he was.
The night was deep and solitary, a foreign, yet familiar, friend. The stillness buzzed with the distant sounds of traffic, of insects, of a wide, vast world just beyond the walls of the motel that was so close to him, yet so far away.
He couldn't remember the name of the motel. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered--nothing like that, anyway. Not in this stillness, not in this night, not when it was just him and Dean in two nondescript beds, alone and together, united and separated.
Here, it was just them. Here was all Sam had ever really possessed, all he'd ever really been able to depend on. There had been times, of course, where there had been more. The times growing up when his father's strong presence had filled the room, and sureness and safety had soothed Sam to sleep. The times at college when Jess lay next to him, and her life and love had lulled him away. Both were gone now, mere memories, as insubstantial as a dream.
Here, though, there was no time. There was no place. He was no further from his loss, no closer. He wasn't transient; he wasn't stationary. He simply was.
His eyes tracked the ceiling, watching the ebb and flow of lights as headlights shone from the nearby highway. He watched their pattern, felt it, and let himself drift with the simple movement.
Back and forth. Always moving.
They'd spent too many days like that. Too many weeks, too many months. Lost time, wasted time, gone and drifting behind them like those dying glares of passing headlights on lonely highways.
He breathed in; he breathed out.
It was that simple, that pure. Just breathing. Just existing in the stillness.
There was no hunt. There was no dream for something more. Just Sam and Dean, Dean and Sam. Brothers.
Sam had never existed without Dean, didn't think he ever could. He might have believed he could once, or made himself believe, but that strength had left him now, just like most of the people he'd ever loved, just like all his dreams and desires. The time at Stanford was a blur to him, a strange, surreal time in his life where he'd tried to stand alone.
He'd tried, and failed.
Closing his eyes, he felt the stillness, felt it settle over him, overtake him. Louder than his heartbeat, louder than the workings of his brain, he could just effuse into it.
It wasn't emptiness, not like some people understood emptiness. Sam knew emptiness. He knew the expanse that was death, the consuming bleakness that swallowed you whole and left nothing behind. He'd been there, he'd been part of it. He'd died, and that fact haunted him. He couldn't remember it, not really, but somehow he understood.
That emptiness stood in his mind in opposition to the stillness here. Emptiness was agony; stillness was peace. The days with Dad were an emptiness of who he couldn't be. The days with Jess were an emptiness of what he could never have.
The days with Dean--
The days with Dean were something else. They were fleeting and terrifying, frustrating and terrible.
He opened his eyes, letting them linger on his brother, asleep in the other bed. Dean slept well now, slept like the entire world was his, and Sam supposed it was.
Dean could be happy. Dean was free. Not just from life, from hunting, from thinking ahead, but from him. From the burden of being the big brother, from the burden of always watching out for Sam.
And Sam hated himself sometimes for all of it, for not changing it, for not stopping it, for being the cause of it to begin with. Just like sometimes he hated Dean. Hated him for leaving him like this, for saying he didn't care. Because the world was ending and Sam wanted to rage and Dean just wanted to go.
It hurt. It hurt more than anything. It was guilt and failure and pain and wrong. He couldn't shake it, he couldn't breathe with it.
And yet, he could. He could let it go. Not in the day; not when he saw Dean's manic qualities mask his slow descent. But here, in the stillness, it was okay. Because stillness wasn't nothingness; stillness wasn't absence of reality. It was suspended time, time away from time, where the world was moving, but Sam was standing still. Where Sam was standing back and looking at it, more than the emotions, more than the frenetic day-to-day hunt. Where Sam was and wasn't and all the things in his life made sense, were made simple and ready to be grasped.
His eyes wandered to the ceiling and he listened. He waited. He tuned in, settled his mind, quieted his heart, until he heard the gentle sound of his brother's breathing.
His brother's life.
The life that had been traded for his. The life that had been bought by their father. The life that Sam would save if it was the last thing he ever did.
He understood, though, why Dean had to do it. He knew. He knew that it was the emptiness that drove Dean to make the deal, and that it was the stillness that kept Dean happy. In a world of chaos, of doubts, of evil, it was all they had left sometimes. It didn't erase the truth--Dean was still going to hell, Sam was still tempted to save him in all the wrong ways--but it displaced the feelings, displaced everything until all there was only stillness, and that was enough.
The thoughts weren't easy, rough and jagged in the recesses of his mind, but they flowed, almost effortlessly, tumbled smooth in his stream of thought before settling in his mind like rocks in the bottom of a brook. As Sam followed a set of headlights tracing across the ceiling, he let his eyes drift shut in the night. The stillness overtook him until his breathing evened out, matched his brother's, and Sam fell asleep.