DISCLAIMER: I don't own any characters from Supernatural or the song "Breakdown," which came from Chris Daughtry. Also, the title of this story is actually the title of a short story by Janni Lee Simner.
Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester, with a guest appearance (sort of) by Becky from the episode Skin
Setting: Post IMTOD. Also placed directly after my story A Song For No One's Mourning.
Warnings: AU after IMTOD.
A Song For Two Voices
Open up the book you beat me with again.
Read it off one sentence at a time.
I'm tired of all the lines,
Convictions and your lies.
What right do you have to point at me?
Sam gave a long, slow sigh and lay back in bed, his fingers dancing idly over the bedcovers next to his leg as his gaze shifted once again to the door of their motel room's bathroom. Dean had been in there for almost twenty minutes, and the shower had only gone for about half that. What could he be doing in there?
With another sigh, he cast his mind around for new subjects—and came up with…zilch, except for more of Dean.
He'd sprung his brother from the hospital pretty soon after they finished their incredibly Meg Ryan-esque moment in Dean's room. He'd been of the personal opinion that Dean should stay an extra day or so, just to make sure everything really was okay, but of course the older Winchester wouldn't hear of it, and so they left the moment all the paperwork was filled out.
There had been a brief argument over who was going to drive—an argument that Sam had won with a combination of what Dean called "lawyer tricks" and "I'm-a-puppy-pet-me looks."
And then there'd been…silence. Just utter, complete silence, the entire ride home. Sam had driven, and Dean had leaned carefully back in his seat, and they hadn't said a word to each other. Once or twice Dean's hand had strayed toward the radio, but then his hand would just drop, for no apparent reason. And when they'd gotten back here, Dean had gone off to shower with barely a mutter.
Sam just couldn't figure it out. Back at the hospital, he'd thought his brother hadn't ever planned to let go of him. He'd been prepared for questions, reprimands, pretty much everything from A to Z, but…not this. Not this horrible silence.
Not this ice that Sam wasn't even sure should be broken.
Well, I'm sitting alone thinking about it all over coffee,
And still crowding my space are the things you still hold against me.
You cannot save me.
Dean winced slightly as he let his shirt fall across his shoulders, inadvertently stretching the bandaged skin over his gut. Finally, though, he was fully clothed again, and he leaned against the sink, resting his weight on his hands.
He supposed he couldn't stay in here much longer. He'd already prolonged his slower as long as possible, and as much as he'd like to stay in here and avoid his brother forever, he probably didn't have much time before Sam got worried and came knocking.
It was just…what was he supposed to say? How does a man go about talking to someone who has just come out of what basically amounts to a walking coma? And for that matter, if he put himself in Sam's shoes, Dean could see how Sam could have the same kinds of questions running through his mind…
The fact was, they'd both been through hell for the last month, and what can possibly be said to make that better?
Was it maybe better not to try at all?
Dean let out a small sigh and pushed himself away from the sink and straightened, hissing slightly at the twinge it caused. Once it subsided, he turned and headed resolutely for the door.
Sam was lying down then he came out, staring at the ceiling, and for a moment Dean's breath caught in his throat as his mind jerked suddenly back to the horror that had been his life since the accident.
But then Sam's eyes turned to him, and the nightmare faded from his eyes.
But he still had no idea what to say.
He went over and sat down on the bed, moving pretty much in autopilot, and leaned against the headboard, crossing his arms over his chest. He felt Sam's gaze leave him after a moment, and then Sam asked, "How're you feeling?"
Dean almost managed to keep the angry words back.
"Actually, Sammy, I could be better."
The silence that followed seemed deeper, somehow, more impenetrable.
Then Sam got up and left without a word, and Dean had an almost irresistible urge to bite his own tongue off.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
It's not the time to break down.
It's not the time to break up this love.
Keep it together, now.
It's not the time to break.
"Hey, Becky."
"Oh, my God, SAM!"
Sam felt his mouth quirk into a small smile that felt oddly foreign on his lips at Becky's happy-shocked voice. He could practically see them now—Becky clutching her phone tightly while Zack and Derek crowded in too close and her not caring.
But the small sign of good humor vanished when Becky spoke again, this time to ask questions that Sam didn't want to answer, didn't want to think about, didn't want to know.
"Sam, what happened?"
What happened…
There were so many things that Becky could have been asking when she said that—a thousand, no, a hundred thousand, ways to reply—reasons that it had all gone so wrong, so terribly, horribly wrong…
"Look, Becky, I'm sorry about the car."
She sounded genuinely surprised, and a little put out, when she replied. "Sam, I don't care about the damn car! I would've given you the car if you'd asked! Are you all right?"
Was he all right?
Sam couldn't help it. He laughed.
Becky didn't apologize, though it was obvious by her silence that she realized how ridiculous the question was, and Sam was once again reminded of why she was one of his closest friends.
"Becky, listen. I just called to tell you that you don't have to keep my secret anymore. You can…tell Zack. And Derek. And…well, anyone you want, I guess."
"Uh…okaaay…" Becky said slowly. "Sam, where is this coming from?"
Sam shrugged even though she couldn't see him. "We're leaving town," he said frankly.
"…Oh. Well, sure. I mean…you usually do."
"We're leaving town, and I'm not sure when we're coming back."
"I know. You said that last time you were here. Sam, what's going on with you?"
Sam almost told her—almost told her that he also planned to change his phone number, his e-mail address, planned to drop out of sight entirely and never again see anyone from his old life.
And he almost told her why.
"Sam?"
"I'll drop off the car in the morning."
Read it all, no need for separating here.
You see what you want and try to justify
All your little lines,
Convictions and your lies.
What right do you have to point at me?
Dean didn't ask why Sam changed his number.
He wanted to, Sam could tell. When he gave his brother the new number, the younger Winchester could see the question rising to Dean's lips.
But then their eyes met, and Sam's held such pain, such raw, open agony, that the question died before it ever came to life.
They left town the next day at noon. Sam dropped the car at Becky's as promised, and as he'd expected, she proved difficult to leave. She kept asking him to stay—a little longer, just a little longer—and it didn't help that Zack and Derek were there, too, and repeating her pleas with extra little puppy-eyed looks thrown in for good measure.
But he extricated himself with relative ease, anyway, and when he returned to the motel room he found the car parked and his brother ready to go.
Sam didn't argue, mainly because he'd been hoping to get away from here as soon as possible. In fact, he didn't say anything at all, and neither did Dean. They just got into the car, and put Palo Alto behind them once again.
And thus did the silence begin.
Well, I'm sitting alone thinking about it all over coffee,
And still crowding my space are the things you still hold against me.
You cannot save me.
Dean Winchester wasn't exactly the authority on what was normal. It was only to be expected with the life he'd led. John Winchester had forgotten "normal" long ago—whether inadvertently or intentionally, it didn't matter—and he'd of course never taught his sons what the word met.
A little odd, that Sam would be the one of them to have a sense of normalcy. After all, he hadn't even had the small amount of childhood experience with the matter that Dean had under his belt. And yet, as life would have it, Sam was really the authority on the matter now.
Dean really wished right now that he was privy to that secret that made for normalcy.
Maybe if he had that knowledge, he would have some answers.
And there were so many answers to be had, all of them beginning with three simple words.
Is it normal?
Was it normal for Sam to seem like a stranger right now? Was it normal that neither of them really slept anymore? Was it normal that Sam would get up and leave without a word at bizarre hours like midnight and two in the morning, or that Dean never tried to find out where he went?
Was it normal that there should be no words between those who had always had something to say, to each other if to no one else?
Was it normal that Dean had little desire to break the silence—this terrible silence that had settled over them like a blanket that only ushered in the cold?
He just didn't know anymore.
Maybe he never had.
XXX
They kept on hunting. It was the only thing that remained basically the same between them—except that there were a lot fewer words, a lot less talking ideas out, no banter or joking or quiet chuckles from Sam or loud laughter from Dean.
And no matter where they went, Sam would get up and sneak out after he thought Dean was asleep, with no indication of where he was going. He didn't act like he was hiding anything, but…
Well, what if he was?
What if he was out there doing…something? Something not good?
What if this was the kind of warning sign that John had told him about?
And what if this meant Sam was going to be…taken from him somehow?
That thought, when it finally occurred to him a couple of weeks later, was enough to spur Dean into action, and one night, when Sam left the motel room, Dean got up and followed.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
It's not the time to break down.
It's not the time to break up this love.
Keep it together now.
It's not the time to break.
The keys were still in the room, and the Impala was still in the lot.
And Dean's Sam-sense told them that his brother hadn't left the hotel.
Which left very few places he could actually be.
For almost ten minutes, Dean crept around the silent motel. He checked the lobby—where he got a very strange look from the night-worker—every hallway, even went out to look inside the car.
He found his brother in none of those places.
Oddly enough, Sam was in the weight room.
He was alone when Dean found him, going at it with a punching bag hanging from the ceiling, causing the thing to leap and bounce and twirl around like a disturbing imitation of a jackrabbit.
For a few minutes, Dean just stood and watched his brother, intrigued.
The first thing he noticed was that Sam's face was blank. He was beating the life out of that bag, and yet he did not look angry.
The second thing was that Sam's punches had no real life behind them. They had plenty of strength—actually, quite a lethal amount of it—but they were too mechanical, too calculated, too…mindless.
The third thing was that Sam was panting, sweating—he was obviously tiring.
And yet his punches weren't slowing. In fact, they were speeding up, getting stronger.
And then Sam swung twice more, and Dean freakin' heard the chain start to snap. Then he stopped, and his arms dropped to his sides.
"You can come in, Dean, I'm not gonna turn on you."
Dean started at the voice, but obeyed it blindly and stepped into the room. "So this is where you've been disappearing to in the middle of the night?" he asked, surprised at the sound of his own voice.
Sam shrugged and stripped off his wrist guards, walking over to put them back where he'd gotten them. "Sometimes. When there's no place with a punching bag, I run."
"You…run?"
"Yeah. Sometimes a block, sometimes a couple miles. It…it helps me forget, and it's better than, you know, killing people—which is what I feel like doing."
There was something…wrong…with the way he said it, something almost accusatory in his tone. But it was layered, too, with sadness and agony, and that was what Dean chose to hear.
Not the accusation.
Not that it could—maybe—be his own fault that Sam felt this way.
Not that he'd already managed to screw things up with this whole stepping-into-Dad's-shoes thing.
He couldn't handle that.
Open up the book you beat me with again.
Read it off one sentence at a time.
Dean managed to hold out for another week.
Sam continued to leave without a word in the middle of the night, only now he didn't wait for Dean to fake sleep.
They kept looking for hunts, because it kept one from going stir-crazy and the other from dwelling on regrets.
And the silence did not lift.
It was kind of odd, because their relationship had not changed—not at its basest level. On hunts, they looked out for each other in exactly the same way, and even though they didn't talk to each other, they still knew.
They felt each other's pain in addition to their own, and maybe that was why Sam felt the need to run in circles or beat the crap out of cement-filled bags that couldn't fight back.
It was certainly a good part of the reason for Dean's breakdown, when it finally came.
It happened exactly one week after the conversation with Sam—sad, that he could just think "the conversation" without having to specify. The Winchesters had been staying in some crap motel in some crap city, hunting what was either a possessed pup or just one really ticked off Great Dane, and on the night they made the kill, Sam—of course—got hurt.
It wasn't bad, or anything—the cut probably wouldn't even scar. But it bled all the same, and for some reason, that rattled Dean tonight in a way that it never had before.
Later, Sam left—for a run tonight—and Dean found himself alone. That was okay, though, he guessed. Nowadays it didn't matter anyway.
Dean couldn't sleep tonight—he kept seeing Sam bleeding, only in his mind it was a lot worse than it had actually been in real life. Desperate, he finally turned on the TV, though lately he'd had little interest in the shows, and left it on whatever channel it turned on to anyway.
But Fate was feeling funny again, because the TV was turned onto ER—on a scene that apparently involved killing off some dude who looked remarkably like John Winchester.
XXX
Dean sat on the floor in the middle of the motel room, staring blankly into space and shaking. Around him, the motel room was in shambles. The TV—which had, of course, been the first to go—was lying on the floor, the screen shattered and the rest wrecked. Everything else in the room was torn, or cracked, or shattered.
They were lucky, because Dean was all three.
He didn't even know Sam had entered the room until the younger, taller Winchester crouched down next to him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Dean took a swing at him—and not exactly a half-hearted one.
Sam must have been surprised, but it didn't keep him from grabbing Dean's wrist and halting it mid-punch. Dean saw red, and his other fist flew, this time clipping Sam on the chin. Sam grunted, and then they were in a full-scale wrestling match.
Sam didn't throw any punches, and he took the ones he couldn't block in relative silence, so their scuffle was a quiet one, and ended with Dean pinned to the ground, with Sam holding him carefully but firmly against the floor.
It was then that Dean realized he had no idea what they were fighting about, and he went limp in Sam's hold. Slowly, cautiously, Sam rolled off him and stood, pulling Dean up with him.
Dean didn't realize that he'd been crying the whole time until Sam reached out and brushed one of the tears off, and then pulled him into a rough hug.
"What the hell are you doing? Lemme go, you freak! Let go, Sam!"
But a fresh wave of sobs hit him even as he finished the demand, and he just…stopped fighting it. Mainly because he was fairly certain he couldn't even stand up anymore, let alone throw Sam across the room, which is what he actually wanted to do.
No. Really. He did.
Sam led him over to the bed and sat him down, his hold tightening. Dean leaned against him, his entire body shaking with exhaustion, and the tears went on and on and on…
Sam held onto him even after they stopped, though, and Dean couldn't bring himself to pull away. His mind screamed that this was a major moment—the kind that he avoided like the plague—but still he didn't move, because at last, the silence was broken. Broken by tears and shouts and anger and pain, sure, but…broken all the same.
And for the first time in weeks, Dean wasn't.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
Well, it's not the time to break down.
Sam called Becky the next day, while Dean was negotiating payment for the wrecked room with the motel owner.
As he'd expected, she forgave him readily, even before he explained why he'd acted the way he had, and why he'd changed his number. She did ask him if he'd regained his sanity, and he'd smiled at that simply because it was funny.
He'd forgotten what that was like.
Then he explained that he realized he was wrong, now—that it wasn't right to just cut everyone out of his life in the name of chivalry and keeping everyone alive, when really the decision was made more out of cowardice than anything else. Well, for him, anyway—he had no doubt that Dean really did cut people off for the reasons he said he did.
Dean came over in time to hear that last part, and when Sam hung up and looked at his brother, Dean simply nodded and looked satisfied.
But then he frowned and took a closer look at Sam's face, and Sam realized too late that this was the first time Dean had actually taken a look at him this morning. The frown deepened at the sight of the black eye, the split lip, and guilt flashed across his face.
"God, Sammy, I'm so sorry."
Sam was a little startled at the apology—Dean hardly ever did that even before the accident—but Dean was obviously waiting for an answer, and he chuckled—an honest, true laugh.
"Yeah, well, it's about time you snapped."
Oddly enough, the chuckle and the words fit perfectly together, and Dean stopped looking so guilty.
But all of these things—the renewed friendship with Becky, the feeling that it was okay to smile, to laugh, again, even the fact that he and Dean were talking again—none of them were the best part of the morning.
No, the best part was that when they were getting into the car, Dean looked over at Sam, let out a long, slow, smart-ass Dean Winchester grin—and pulled out his box of tapes.
They roared out of town with Sam's least favorite band of all time—which would from now on become one of the best in his eyes—blaring from the speakers, and the last of the silence faded away.
Well, it's not the time to break up this love.
Keep it together now.
Well, it's not the time to break.
Break down.
Author's Note: Okay. So. Not exactly the longest one-shot I've ever written, and it's not exactly the best, either, but that's okay. I hope you guys liked it!
Oh, and sorry for the copious use of the word "silence"—it was necessary for the story!
Now, review, please!