The Shadow Overhead

The story of this story: Wrote a draft, realized it was bad, discarded it. Wrote a draft, realized it was bad, discarded it. Contemplated giving up. Refused to give up after so much work, got both drafts, smushed them together, polished it off, uploaded.

My writing process, everyone.

Course, I was in the final stages of polishing it off when I realized the whole thing should've been from Dean's perspective, not Sam's, but instead of rewriting it all over again I settled for going "Arughughrgh" and getting a headache. There is a chance I will go on and write this story for Dean's perspective, though admittedly not a huge one.

Whilst this story was not inspired by it, I have been listening to a song I love, 'I miss you,' the Boyce Avenue feat. Cobus Potgieter cover, and I think they match very well together. Particularly the lyrics,

"The unsuspecting victim,

Of darkness in the valley..."

Which are painfully, poetically accurate to Sam's current condition.

Anyway.

Available on Tumblr at: post/71503235582/supernatural-fanfiction-the-shadow-overhead

Reviews appreciated

Enjoy.

:: The Shadow Overhead::

The Impala slipped beyond the boundary of the town, past the domain of orange streetlights and into a heavy blue night. Clouds crouched below the stars and moon and made the Impala's headlights the only light in the world.

Sam felt like he was stuck in a one of those nightmares where no matter how far and fast he ran he could never escape anything. Ever since the Trials it was like he couldn't breathe enough air. He was perpetually shivery, somehow tired and jumpy at the same time; like his bones were hollow and his own thumping heart was shaking them loose of his body.

He felt sick. He felt ill. He felt fundamentally Not Okay.

Earlier that night he and Dean had been scouting an old warehouse together. Sam had suggested splitting up to cover more ground but Dean had refused with no explanation. Just an immediate 'No,' like it was unthinkable. Like Sam had asked Dean to leave him behind. With a roll of his eyes Sam had accepted this strange behavior; Dean had been doing a lot of inexplicable things as of late.

So they'd combed the building together. Admittedly it was a comfort to have his brother by his side.

The only sound had been the soft scuffs of their boots on the cement and they're carefully quiet breathing. All had been still and quiet.

Then they'd been ambushed.

The demons had come at them from Sam's side, leaping down from stacks of abandoned wares, and he'd been too slow to react. His reflexes were long since shot and he been knocked to the ground before he'd even seen who his opponents were. Sam's gun had been knocked away and his breath had been knocked out too. As he had fallen Sam heard Dean yell something that sounded like "Duck!" though in hindsight it was probably actually startled and furious profanity, sharp enough it should've saved them.

Fists had pressed against Sam's collarbones and a knee had found its way beneath his ribs. Sam had struck out at the demon but it was like punching a shark. Salt water rendered his actions into slow motion and the beast, all muscle and impossible to hold, grinned at his weakness with a thousand teeth. Dean was tangled up with two other demons. He was but a few meters from Sam but from all the help he could give he may as well have been on the moon. The demon had laughed as Sam's strength had failed then, still laughing, snapped it's fist across Sam's face.

Sam's head had whipped to the side and smacked into the cement. Starlight shattered across his vision and there was blood and grit in his mouth.

The demon's fist crashed into him from the other way.

There was no oxygen in the air he was breathing, his lungs felt damp and his ribs were caving in around the knee still pinning him down.

Smiling and hissing the demon curled a fist in Sam's had and slammed his head into the ground.

He'd had been a goner.

Then.

Shift.

Concussion stole his memory from him and sewed his thoughts back together like a cropped film reel. He didn't remember his vision going black; there had been no Sam to see the darkness. Abruptly he found himself three meters away from where he had fallen, back pressed against a groaning stack of pallets, abruptly no longer being beaten to death.

The shock made him spasm in his skin.

Standing over the fallen demons was Dean, wide eyed and with a smear of blood on his forehead. Blinking at his little circle of destruction Dean wiped at the blood with the back of the hand that still held the demon-knife. Unable to quite grasp what had happened Sam shook his head and moved to sit up. Both actions were bad ideas and he slumped back with a gasp, flinching around the headache braking into his skull. He'd been hit so hard he couldn't remember the blow.

Dean had said words but they were only cotton balls in Sam's head. However when Dean reached down and grabbed a handful of shoulder and hauled him to his feet Sam could make sense of it. He scrambled his limbs into some semblance of order and staggered after Dean from the warehouse, careful not to step in any demon blood as he did so.

They'd gotten into the car, Sam falling into it like a mess and Dean climbing in like a fighter pilot, and had taken off into the night. Sam had awarded Dean a perfunctory "Good job" for taking down the demons and saving both their arses then turned and pressed his face against the cold glass of his window.

His joints ached and nausea rolled in his throat. He was just so tired all the time. It was in his bones, his leaden marrow.

From some dusty box of memory stored back when he was young and had actually gone to school Sam remembered the ending of the Robert Frost poem, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.'

(He'd been good at school, remembering things that couldn't help him win the fights he was fighting.)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

He had miles to go before he could sleep.

Sam sighed and closed his eyes. His head hurt where it leant against the hard glass but he was too tired to move or care; he tried to replace his thoughts with the hum and rattle of the Impala. It almost worked.

He didn't sleep but Dean thought he did; Sam could tell because Dean didn't feed a tape to the Impala as the usual sacrifice made in exchange for bad music. It was a small thing but sat heavily in Sam's head, chewing on the inside of his skull.

Again and again the demons came for them and again and again Sam responded too little, too late.

Sam's inaction had put Dean in danger.

He'd let him down.

Again.

The memory of his quiet little end of the world in that abandoned church welled up in Sam like black water.

His eyes flew open.

Dean and the car's interior were mostly shadows but the yellow and red dashboard lights highlighted the handbrake here, a knuckle there. The glow of the headlights was weak on Dean's face, but it was enough. The familiarity of the scene was both comforting and deeply, deeply tiring.

"Dean," Sam said softly and sitting up.

"Hello Sleeping Beauty, enjoy your nap?" Dean asked, voice sounding unnaturally loud, looking across at Sam then back out to the road.

"Loved it," Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck and stifling a yawn. "Where are we?"

"About an hour away," Dean said, not needing to specify that it was the Men of Letters Batcave that they were an hour away from.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Dean glancing across at Sam occasionally.

"I'm sorry," Sam said abruptly.

The words fell from his mouth and hit the floor quietly; they rolled with the movement of the car. Dean glanced across again. Sam didn't look up but he knew the confused expression that would be on Dean's face; Dean's confusion always looked borderline angry.

"What?" He said, confused tone also borderline angry.

Sam suspected it was a defense mechanism he'd learnt though didn't know if it was conscious or subconscious.

"Back in the warehouse I didn't see the demons," Sam looked up at Dean. "I almost got you killed. I'm sorry."

"You didn't almost get me killed," Dean said, eyes flicking over and away uncomfortably.

"Dean," Sam replied. It was all he had to say.

"Well, you didn't get me killed, I'm fine. We're both fine," Dean said in an admirable attempt at a reassuring tone.

Sam looked at his hands.

"This time," he said, still looking down. "I didn't notice the demons coming-"

"I didn't notice them coming either!"

"-and when they did attack I reacted too slowly. Ever since the Trials I've been…I'm not what I was. I'm no good for hunting," Sam's mouth was dry as the memory of the church haunted him again. "I let you down again. I'm a liability. I'm not safe."

"You're fine," Dean said; his determined voice sounding a lot like his angry voice.

They both knew that when he said he couldn't hunt Sam wasn't asking Dean to stop, he wouldn't do that. But nobody was supposed to hunt alone. It was an unwritten law they'd both grown up knowing. The law could not lightly.

And by Winchesters, given their past record, the law could not be broken at all.

So when Sam said he couldn't hunt he wasn't saying they should both give it up; he was saying Dean should find someone else to hunt with.

Dean should replace Sam.

Sam remembered burning to death in that old, abandoned church and asking Dean, "Who are you going to turn to next time instead of me?"

He remembered how hopeless he felt. He remembered absolute desolation.

He and Dean had been through rocky patches before, what with demon blood and losing his soul and leaving Dean in purgatory.

But those had been different. Then, Sam knew he had been doing the wrong thing.

This time Sam had been trying his hardest. He'd been doing everything to be the best brother he could for Dean and Dean had still left. Sam had finally seen the truth that he was, in a fundamental and unchangeable way, unequal to being Dean's brother. Even at his best he still wasn't enough for Dean.

Sam remembered how utterly forsaken he'd felt.

Giving his failed life for this cause had seemed like the only way he could justifiably say "Please come back for me," though of course by doing so would make coming back for him impossible.

Then Dean had returned for him anyway. He hadn't needed or wanted Sam's sacrifice, proving his worth; he'd considered Sam worth saving.

Even though he'd been jumped up and burning Sam had still felt his heart come over all huge and painful in a strange but good way. It had felt like surfacing, it had felt like seeing sunlight after years lost underground.

But Dean's reassurance was ash in Sam's mouth now. It was not because he doubted Dean's sincerity; it was because of the opposite. He should've let Dean leave him behind. Now Dean had tied himself back to Sam and Sam found he could not pull his weight.

Sam's whole soul felt heavy and sinking.

Dean should've left him behind.

"I'm not okay Dean," Sam said, despairing, pained. "One of these days I'm going to get one of-"

"No," Dean jabbed a finger at Sam, "You're fine, I'm fine. You're not going to make anything bad happen, Sam. Yes the Trials messed you up but we'll figure it out. We've had everything in the world come at us at one time or another and we've made it through every time. Stop trying to give up on me, I haven't given up on you."

San recognized this as a 'Dean Speech,' a rare phenomenon in which Dean peeled off his carefully constructed mask of bravado and recklessness and had a Dean to Sam heart to heart. Or at least he tried to. Sam wasn't feeling it. He could see Dean was reaching out but was too defeated to reach back and Dean couldn't cross the distance on his own.

Sam pressed his forehead against the window again. Curls of sweaty hair tickled his eyelids. He was too tired to fight anymore, in life, in his own head, in this futile effort with Dean.

"Okay," he said, voice roughened by everything unsaid.

They didn't speak again until they got back to the Men of Letters bunker. As Dean parked the Impala Sam went inside the room he was sleeping in. It was not personalized like Dean's, unless discarded laundry and a half unpacked equipment bag counted as 'personalized.' Whilst the bunker was the closest thing they currently had to a home it still wasn't close enough for Sam. There were too many broken homes in his past, too many homes broken by him. Sam wasn't sure if having a home was in his nature. He could easily see he and Dean living in the bunker for the rest of however long they lived, sleeping there, eating there, returning from battles there and celebrating victories there, but a small, restless part of him would always have an emergency bag packed, ready for life to inevitably drive him from any home he made.

Sam got changed into his bedclothes and brushed his teeth before getting into bed. He still felt like his stomach was spinning a little but it wasn't as bad as before and he let sleep take him.

That night he dreamt of a shadow on his shoulder and a hospital white as bone. He had a dream about forgetting everything he had ever known that he didn't remember when he woke.

Dean was already crashing around the bunker's kitchen by the time Sam was up. Wincing, Sam followed the noise to its source. Dean was already wearing his day gear, which was unusual; normally he didn't change out of the dead man bath robe until nine o'clock at the earliest. It was ten past eight by the digital clock on the adopted microwave. Sometimes Sam had to threaten to take a photo of him in the robe and text it to Cass to make Dean get changed at all. He really did an unhealthy lack of taboo for dead man bath robe.

Pausing at the room's entrance Sam looked around but could find no discernible task Dean was committing himself to. Dean seemed to be moving plates and cups from drawer to drawer with no clear purpose other than making an unholy racket.

"Dean, what are you doing?" Sam asked in consternation as he scrubbed a hand across his face.

"Sam," Dean said, putting down an assorted stack of plates and looking around. He sounded like he'd been waiting for Sam.

"I need to talk to you about something," Dean added, wiping his hands dry on his pants and moving towards Sam.

Eyeing Dean's approach warily Sam said, "That doesn't sound good."

His trepidation was evident. Seeing it, Dean stopped, still wiping his now dry hands on his clothes.

Sam waited for Dean to continue but Dean appeared to have lost expended all his courage on that first sentence.

"What about?" Sam finally prompted.

Dean opened his mouth and-

Shift.

Just like the warehouse.

Sam jumped again, heart tripping over itself.

One moment Dean had been about to speak, the next moment Sam found himself standing forward and to the left without walking there, with Dean having moved away from him so the distance remained the same.

It had happened again.

Dean's eyes were on him, frightened and terrible. He'd had that expression before, when he'd barreled into that church all armed and ready to save Sam only to realize that the danger wasn't something he could kill or prepare for. He'd looked at Sam like he was both looking at his brother and looking at the one holding a gun to his brother's head, like they were one and the same. Inextricable.

Sam's feeling of foreboding increased; it was like a shadow had passed overhead.

"What about?" Sam repeated, trying to hide his internal derailment as he watched Dean try to do the same.

Dean stepped forward again, losing the distance he had held onto somehow, for some unknown reason, in the time when Sam's memory had slipped gears.

"Look Sam, I don't know how to say this so I'm just going to say it," Dean said, seeming to find his courage somewhere in the middle of the sentence.

Sam knew a hit was coming but didn't know how to take it. All he could do was rally his strength for the inevitable aftermath.

Dean did not do Sam the injustice of lowering his eyes or looking away.

"I've been keeping a secret from you."

Sam blinked.

The Winchesters were very, extremely, excruciatingly familiar with secrets and lies, but whilst Sam's mind grew a little sharper he felt no punch to the gut. He understood what Dean had said but there was no evidence yet, for Dean or against him, so Sam didn't know how to take the admission.

There was a difference between knowing a demon had kidnapped someone and rounding the corner to come face to face with a tableau of a demon carving havoc into their victim's throat.

Sam was still in the intellectual part, the knowing part.

But part of the intellectual part was knowing the emotional blow was coming and that it was going to hurt.

"Okay," Sam said slowly, "what secret?"

Dean glanced away for a second and took a rallying breath.

"I can't tell you," he said.

Sam frowned, nonplussed, thinking maybe he misheard.

"What?"

"Not yet," Dean added earnestly, "I'll be able to tell you one day just…not yet."

"So…" Sam said slowly, unable to keep the ironic edge from his voice, "you wanted to tell me you are keeping a secret, but you can't tell me what it is?"

He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Yes," Dean said firmly.

"Why not?"

"I can't tell you."

Frustration made Sam's hackles rise. Dean's expression of apology conveyed that he understood how inadequate this was but it did little to quell Sam's ire.

"This secret…is it about me?" Sam asked, facing the proverbial music.

Dean gave Sam a look that confirmed all his fears before he'd spoken.

"Yes."

Of course.

It could not have been something else. It could never have been something else. If he could do something wrong, he would. If something could go wrong with him, it would.

Apprehension folded itself into fear in Sam's chest.

"What is it?" Sam's voice was flat and serious, his eyes saying, 'Do not mess with me' so that he didn't have to.

"Look, Sam, I really can't tell you…"

Sam snapped his head to the side and turned from Dean, betrayal making him sick. He didn't want to listen anymore.

But then Dean started talking again and Sam, with great internal effort, forced himself to put aside his pain and listen. The action went against his nature, bridling his righteous anger felt backwards and wrong, but he had learned the hard way about the pitfalls of ignorance.

Sometimes he had not listened and other times he had not been listened to and they had always ended in disaster. So much grief and pain in the Winchesters past could've been prevented if one of them had explained and the other had listened.

So Sam rose above himself to try and avoid repeating the past.

He turned back to face Dean. He had quite been able to shelve his anger, he held it hot in his hands, but at least it wasn't clogging his ears or curdling his brain.

"It's…about you…" Dean said hesitantly, looking at Sam from eye to eye. He seemed to have seen Sam's effort to give him a chance and wanted to offer him something to show it wasn't for naught.

"It's about how you've been feeling like crap after the Trials. I know why and I'm taking care of it, I'm taking care of you. You can't know. It's-" Dean seemed frustrated by his inability to explain as well. "Damn it, I can't explain why, you just can't. This isn't a battle you can win. It's not even a battle you can fight. I'm sorry Sam, I know this is the mother of lame-arse explanations, but it is going to be okay. I promise."

Sam looked down and away, at the ground beneath them and the walls around them.

So there was something wrong with him, and it was because of the Trials. It didn't come as any surprise; it was just another weight going around his neck that threatened to pull him under.

But.

Dean knew what was happening.

Dean said he was taking care of it.

Dean said it would be okay.

Anger and trust rose in Sam's mind, opposing forces each the size of oceans, with teeth like serrated mountains. Fear was the storm above them, on no one's side, not even its own; just a mad and incoherent force that made the ground shake underfoot.

Sam was angry at Dean. He knew Dean wasn't being malicious and was trying to do the right thing but this whole situation felt like a wound.

Sam was afraid for himself, naturally, but even more so he feared for other people. He feared for those he might inadvertently hurt just like all of the people he had inadvertently hurt in the past. Dean he couldn't breathe without somehow injuring.

These were powerful emotions and they had years of memories to back themselves up, anger and fear had long since been ingrained into his instincts, his subconscious

So Sam had to ask himself, could he trust Dean despite them?

Did every time they let each other down undermine their brotherhood?

Or was it that their brotherhood rose above the fact that they had let each other down?

Could Sam trust Dean in keeping a secret from him despite all they had been through? Despite all of the times in the past keeping secrets had brought the walls tumbling down to bury them both?

Sam had been silent for a long time. As he was wracked by indecision, torn between loyalty and fear, leaving and staying, Dean spoke again.

"Listen, Sam, we've been through how much? We've kept secrets and told lies in the past and it's screwed us every time. But…we're brothers…maybe we haven't acted like it all the time but we always figure it out in the end, and that's gotta stand for something. I figured…I have to keep this thing a secret, but if I told you I was keeping it things could go differently; it doesn't have to end badly. I wanted to tell you because I wanted you to know I was keeping something from you. It doesn't make any sense, but it makes more sense than anything else."

Taking a shaky breath Sam rubbed a hand over his mouth and turned away aimlessly.

He didn't know how to put his hands on this. It wasn't even a discernable thing that he could decide yes or no about. There was no way to logic or reason here, he couldn't even weigh his choices. Essentially what Dean had said was that there was a reason Sam shouldn't trust him, he was hiding something and it was about Sam and it was big and had the power to unmake him, but was asking him to trust him anyway.

This wasn't the trust between soldiers who had saved each other lives, or the trust of children who had never been tested. This was the hard kind. This was Sam blindfolded and feeling the barrel of a gun against his temple and Dean telling him not to flinch.

Surely Dean knew what he was asking for could not be done. Not after all that had happened, not after all that Sam had done and been through.

But.

But.

There was Dean in that Lucifer haunted warehouse and Dean in that burning church. There was Dean never letting go of Sam, not for madness nor fire nor any force on this earth. Dean would never leave him for dead and he would never leave him behind. That simple truth had more power than anything else; hate, anger, fear, grief, Heaven and Hell and the end of the world.

Sam took another shaky breath, then another and another. His heart still tipped with fear and the anger still remained but they would not take him. Not now, not after they had come this far. Sam had made his choice.

"Okay, Dean," Sam said. He knew he sounded afraid but that didn't matter; it was the words he was saying that counted. "Okay. I trust you."

Dean looked back at him with a moment of obvious surprise and then nodded, expression resolving into fierce, brotherly determination.

The faceless, unknowable thing still loomed over Sam and threw him into shadow, it still rendered him blind and helpless and unable to even begin to save himself, but Dean was there beside him and Sam knew that he would move Heaven and Earth to save him. He knew that should all hope fail and all salvation be lost, despite all logic and beyond all reason, should the darkness come for Sam, Dean would not forsake him.

And despite all of Sam's fears, despite all that had happened, despite everything, that one, small truth was enough.