title: let the walls around me burn
summary: On the forty-second day, somewhere in the Kalahari, Sam Winchester realizes he doesn't need water anymore.
rating: M for language, possibly disturbing gore, and strongly implied torture
word count: 2110
notes: Written for tigriswolf. Happy belated birthday, hon. I wrote as fast as I could, but this is still late; I'm sorry. I hope you had an awesome birthday.
On the forty-second day, somewhere in the Kalahari, Sam Winchester realizes he doesn't need water anymore.
It was bad at first, after the canteen went dry. His tongue swelled and his lips split and he stopped sweating. But he went on, eyes narrowed against the harsh sunlight, and now—two days later, or three?—his lips have healed and he doesn't feel thirsty at all.
He can't recall exactly when the water ran out, but he remembers how many days it's been since Alabama.
It was May then, and Sam chased them in the Impala at first, his shaking hands clamped down tight on the wheel. He'd been angry before, but this was different—like something waking inside him, unsheathing its claws and baring its teeth. If he'd had any fear to spare, he might have been afraid of it.
(He didn't realize until days later, in central Nebraska, that he'd been leaving a trail of autumn everywhere he went—flowers fading to dust, trees dropping showers of tiny red and gold leaves just out of the bud.)
He followed them first in the Impala, then in a passenger jet across the ocean. After that, a series of smaller planes, and finally the stolen Jeep that now sits empty a week behind him. He walked from there, through grassland and savannah, across the border of Botswana and into the desert.
(He tried to make it rain, that first day without water—he fought the empty sky until blood poured from his nose. Finally, half-mad with thirst and desperation, he staggered on.)
Sam has always thought of deserts as dead, silent expanses of baked sand or cracked earth, but the Kalahari is very much alive. There is grass, and scattered acacia trees, and thorny bushes that snag his filthy, tattered jeans. There's life everywhere, and he can feel it all, from tiny insects skittering beneath the loose dry soil to weaver birds in their giant nests. He can feel the living things, but he hasn't encountered any of them.
The desert clears a path before him. Antelope bound away long before he arrives, hyenas tuck their tails and run, and meerkats hide in their dens. Sam suspects that the plants would flee if they weren't rooted to the earth.
(Even the lions keep their distance; they haven't been at the top of the food chain long enough to make them forget that there are greater predators in the world.)
There's fear seeping into Sam's mind from every direction, and after a while he isn't sure how much of it is his. The desert talks to him in every scuttle of clawed feet fleeing from his approach, in every rustle of hot wind through dry grass and thorny shrubs. The Kalahari speaks with a thousand voices and it says, I will not hinder you, but I want you gone.
That's fine with Sam. He has no interest in this place. The only thing he's interested in is miles ahead, though even from this distance the fear is loud enough to make Sam's teeth ache. The prey hasn't moved today—it must have finally realized that Sam will catch up sooner or later. It—he—must have found a place to make a stand.
Sam is ready. Sam has been ready for a month. He can't bring rain, but yesterday he looked up at a vulture flying so high that it was a speck against the blue. He looked up at it and said, "I wonder if I could kill it from here," and before he could finish the sentence the bird was falling to earth, stone dead.
The fanged thing inside is longing for something to rip apart, and Sam tells it, Soon.
No more than a day's walk through the desert, and the chase will be over.
He has holed up in a cave. Sam isn't overly surprised.
The cave doesn't look like much, its entrance low enough that surely even Sam's prey must stoop to enter. It's surrounded by stubby plants and tumbled boulders. The person Sam has spent the last forty-three days hunting is sitting on one of the rocks, arm resting casually across his knees. He tries for an arrogant smirk, but up close the fear radiating from him is so strong that it makes Sam's ears ring.
"Hi, Sammy. So you finally caught me."
Sam stops at the bottom of the boulder, looking up. The air is hot and still, and he feels unexpectedly calm. "Hello, Alastair," he says. "Where's my brother?"
The demon widens his host's eyes. "You mean you haven't been finding the pieces I've left for you?"
It would be so easy, like snuffing out a candle. Alastair must realize that, because he hurriedly adds, "Most of him is in the cave." He leans forward, hands flat on the rough rock beside him. "You're just in time to watch him die, Sammy. That's what you're good at, isn't it? Watching things die?"
"Why?" Sam says. "Why did you do this?" There has to be a reason other than sheer cruelty. Alastair must have known Sam would destroy him for this.
"Because I didn't get to finish what I started," Alastair says. "He got pulled out of hell before I could turn him into what he was meant to be." He leers, and for a moment the fear is overwhelmed by pleasure. "It was easier, down there—I could rebuild his body with a thought and start all over. At least he still makes the same sounds, even up here."
"You're killing him," Sam says. Not you've killed him, because it isn't a done deal yet. It can't be.
"You of all people should know, Sammy," Alastair says. "Death is only a minor obstacle."
"Okay," Sam says. "Have fun with that."
Alastair looks shocked for only an instant; then his face goes blank and the dead host slowly topples over backward. Sam doesn't bother with exorcisms anymore. It's easier and more practical just to kill the fuckers outright.
He doesn't want to go inside, because he knows Dean is in there and he really doesn't want to see what forty-three days with a demon did to his smartass big brother. He doesn't want to, but Dean is in there, probably dying, and Sam is the only chance he has.
Inside the cave, the stench of blood and rot hits Sam like a brick to the jaw. Dean is lying on his back, naked, his face turned away. The walls are spattered with clotted blood and bits of... Sam looks away, choking, but his eyes are drawn inexorably back to his brother.
There are flies swarming around Dean, crawling over the white spikes of rib protruding from his festering side. They try to flee when Sam approaches, but he stops them midflight and they fall, silent, crushed into unrecognizable black smears before they hit the ground.
Dean's skin has shrunk tight around his bones, and he breathes in whooping gasps that shudder in and out of his wrecked chest. There's nowhere Sam can touch him that won't make it worse. Dean looks like someone went at him with a rusty hacksaw, and now, in the desert's unremitting heat, his body is rotting while he's still in it.
Sam knows—with clarity that cuts straight through the shrieking grief and horror in his head—that the kindest thing he could possibly do for his brother would be to kill him.
"Dean?" Sam says, realizing only then that he's crying. "Hey, Dean? It's Sam. I'm here. I found you. It's—"
Okay. Except that it's not okay, not at all.
A shudder runs through Dean's emaciated body. Slowly, like a rusted winch, his head turns toward Sam's voice. His eyes are gone, must have been for some time, and the flies... the flies have been laying eggs in the empty sockets.
Sam isn't human enough to die of thirst, but he can still puke.
Dean whimpers, the mindless sound of an animal in pain. He manages to raise his one fingerless hand, holds it palm-out in front of his face in a pathetic attempt at defending himself. Terror pours off him, more sickening than the overwhelming stench of decay.
Don't, he's pleading, with the small part of his brain that's still aware. Stop please stop please please.
Sam kneels on the sticky floor beside his brother. "It's okay," he lies, wondering if Dean can even hear him anymore. "It's me, Dean. I'm here." He reaches out, lays his hand on the mangled flesh over Dean's failing heart.
(He remembers spring turning to fall in his wake, flowers fading into ash, life into death. He remembers animals and insects fleeing his path, and he remembers that he couldn't bring rain, and he wonders if he was made only for destruction.)
Nothing happens. Dean's body is shutting down and Sam is beginning to feel the all-too-familiar knife behind his eyes. This isn't going to work. He could kill a pride of lions from a mile away, drop them in their tracks with a thought if he wanted, but he can't do this one thing—
Dean arches off the floor and screams, his eyes open wide.
His eyes.
Bones snap into place, skin closing over open wounds. Dean won't quit screaming and Sam's head is going to explode, pop, brain all over the wall, but he can't stop because it's working, it's—
The screaming stops suddenly and Dean goes still, eyes drifting closed. He's breathing evenly, and he's healed, not a scar left save for the handprint on his shoulder. Sam sees this in the last few seconds before his eyes fill with blood.
He stumbles out of the cave and falls to his knees in the sand, gagging, trying to breathe through the blood running down his throat. He's bleeding from eyes and ears and nose, and he thinks maybe he pushed it too far this time. Maybe he's still human enough to bleed out.
But the hemorrhage stops, and Sam wipes blood away from his eyes and manages to stand. Dean's body is repaired, but he just spent forty-three days being tortured—no angel to dim the memories this time, because Castiel ditched them at the worst possible time—and God only knows what state his mind will be in when he wakes.
"Sam?"
Dean is bracing himself against the outside wall of the cave, eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight. "Where—" he says, then gets a good look at Sam and stumbles forward. "Jesus Christ, Sam, what happened—" He puts a hand on Sam's chin, tilts his face for a better look. "What the hell?" his voice rises, and he's Dean, worried and angry and ready to murder something, and Sam can hardly be blamed for crying a little.
"It's okay," he says. "I'm all right. I'm not bleeding anymore."
"What happened to you?" Dean says. Right about then, he seems to realize that the breeze is reaching places it shouldn't. He glances down and makes a choking noise. "Where the hell are we? And where are my pants? And why do you look like an extra in a slasher flick?"
"What's the last thing you remember?" Sam says. He's still feeling dizzy, so he leans into Dean's steadying hand on his arm.
"Alabama," Dean says. "Haunted house. A week before your birthday." He looks around. "This isn't Alabama."
Sam laughs, sounding a bit like a hyena. "No," he says. "This definitely isn't Alabama."
Dean doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. And if Sam has anything to do with it—which he's pretty sure he already has—Dean will never know exactly how he spent the past forty-three days.
Looking around at the landscape, Dean guesses, "California?"
Sam wipes congealing blood away from his mouth and nose. "Try Africa," he says.
Dean's mouth moves for a moment, but nothing comes out. Then he says plaintively, "Where are my pants?"
There are tears cutting through the blood on Sam's cheeks, and he isn't sure whether they're from crying or laughing. "I'll explain later," he says. "Let's get out of here."
He isn't sure what he has become, or what he is becoming, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared. He pretty much got warned by God Himself to cut it the hell out, and he's done exactly the opposite.
Yeah, Sam is a little scared, and he isn't sure where this road he's headed down will lead him. But he looks at Dean—whole and alive, and bitching about the lack of pants—and knows one thing for certain:
Whatever happens, he isn't sorry.
(end)