"Close Your Eyes"
Mystic25
Summary: Tag to 10x23 "My Brother's Keeper"
Rating: T for imagery.
Special Thanks to: My Beta. You know who you are:)
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"Leaves from the vine,
Falling so slow,
Like fragile, tiny shells,
Drifting in the foam,
Little soldier boy,
Come marching home,
Brave soldier boy,
Comes marching home."
~Iroh
"Avatar: The Last Airbender"
-x-x-
"Sammy, close your eyes."
~Dean Winchester
"Supernatural": Episode: "My Brother's Keeper"
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"Close your eyes…"
The rain made him so cold, the mud pressed cold and wet into his jeans. He shook with shakes too big and wide for his body to contain.
"Close your eyes-" Dean held newspaper over their heads, water bleeding stories into their hair.
He shook his head, water falling into his hair, sliding down his skin; tears mixing with the rain that fell from the clouds. He didn't want to close his eyes, he wanted to see.
He stared up from where he was down on the floor; the floorboards were pressed brittle and broken into his jeans, the smell of his own blood sat in his senses like a stone.
He had accepted this, this time to be his end, his last of everything. But he was never going to see Dean again after this last of everything became nothing at all. He didn't want to close his eyes; not yet- he needed to see him.
His eyes moved around all the gray, broken boards, past the puddle of blood that stained the floor, up into his brother's eyes. They stared back down at him; the same green they always had been, despite everything.
He shook from somewhere too big and wide for him; tears mixed with each other in hot slides down his skin.
Dean abandoned the newspaper and leant forward with a sucking sound of wet dirt and reached out for the jagged cut that ran up and over Sam's kneecap and half of Sam's leg, clawed almost clean to the bone from a dog that had broken through half of its chain. Blood was everywhere, and he threw his hands over everything; covering Sam's shredded skin with his wet hands.
Sam squealed and gasped when he saw something bright and white through all the red. "Dean-" Sam reached for his brother through the downpour, afraid to lose him in the rain and all the blood and pain. He scratched the air with wet fingers until he felt wet flannel and held to it through the pouring rain, crying.
"Sammy close your eyes-" Dean pressed harder, until he felt his palm stuck with blood. "Don't look-!"
"Sammy, close your eyes."
The horrible sound stayed in Sam's throat, dying in the sadness of having to be here, in the gray emptiness of an abandoned restaurant that wouldn't care anything for them after they were gone.
Sam wasn't scared of dying. He had died too many times, and had come close so many times to be afraid of it anymore. He had accepted his death, here on his knees, by his own brother, because it meant that it could save Dean, it could end the suffering and blood and pain that Dean should have never had to endure. It could prevent either of them from hurting anyone else.
The Mark had robbed Dean of everything except the barest of essence that Sam knew was not It, but his brother: No one else was going to die for their life, not ever again.
"Dean-"
"It's okay buddy-" Dean jerked a green bandana out of his soggy jeans' pocket and wrapped it around the hole of blood in Sam's leg, squeezing tightly until Sam jerked forward and cried out. "It's just water 'n rain Sam, makes it look worse than it is-" Dean gave the weakest sounds of laughter as he tied the bandana off and held Sam's leg in both hands, and saw all the blood soddening the cloth. "I have to twist it Sammy-"
Sam stared through the rain, shaking, eyes wide and terrified. "Twist it?-"
"I have to fix your leg-" Dean moved Sam's leg up over his wet jeans and held it above and below where it had broken from where the dog had bitten him.
Sam tried to squirm away, whimpering like a puppy caught somewhere alone. He reached out scared hands to take Dean's off of his knee.
Dean grabbed Sam's clawing hands with one of his- "Stop-Sammy, stop-" "Don't look-okay? Be good for me man, please-" Dean pressed blood stained fingers over Sam's eyes "-don't look!" Sam's smaller body shook under his hands, his crying intensified.
"Dean, no! wait, please!-"
"Wait," Sam felt inside his jacket, pulling out yellowed small things, and held them out with both hands. "Take these," His hands touched old paper, well-worn with countless fingerprints. Cold tears slid down his neck. "And one day, when you find your way back, let these be your guide. They can help you remember, what it was to be good," his breath hurt like something jagged was slicing at his throat. "What it was to love," The thin things seemed to grow too heavy for his fingers, and he dropped them both at his brother's feet.
Their eyes met over the old photographs, paper reflections of the woman who gave them their eyes in the first place, then to themselves, there with each other from the earliest, littlest start of their life.
"It's for family that you must proceed, Dean-"
"I have to do this Sammy," Water dripped from Dean's hair like he was crying, or maybe he was, Sam didn't want to know, he didn't want his big brother to cry. "It'll be okay-"
"To be what you are; to become what you've become, is a stain on their memory. Do it. Or I will-"
"Is it-" Sam's voice shook like a bag of broken glass. "Is it gonna hurt?"
Sam watched the weight shift in the scythe, falling into a tight grip in Dean's hand, and something that didn't come from the Mark moved into Dean's face. Something encompassing, and real, and sad, and so very sorry.
Sam swallowed the same sadness, the pain of After, of being all alone, of Dean having to be alone somewhere for forever, having to live because he didn't.
"Just a little bit-" Dean reached out and took Sam's soaking wet hand, marring them with stains of Sam's blood. "Just for a little bit, Sammy-okay?"
Sam was afraid, afraid that all his blood would leak out of him, afraid that he wasn't going to able to walk or run again.
But Dean was there, and Dean was always brave for him.
And he had to be brave for Dean too.
Sam stared up at Dean and nodded a slow, last 'okay' with that nod, and let it become real enough so it gave Dean something to hold onto when he wouldn't be able to anymore.
He didn't want to die, but if he had too die, he wanted it to be from Dean. Dean was at his beginning, and he wanted him to be at his end.
"I'm sorry," Dean grabbed Sam's leg firm in both hands.
"Forgive me-"
Sam stared at Dean for a moment, just one more moment, rainwater and tears becoming indecipherable from each other.
Dean raised the scythe high then swung it in an arch that Sam knew wouldn't miss, or waste any momentum.
Sam shut his eyes tightly.
He waited until it began to come right at him; then closed his eyes. I love you, Dean.
The scythe made a hard contact, but Sam was left with no pain, no death. His eyes opened- to watch, as Death crumbled away like a cracked Terra Cotta statue to the floor.
"It's okay Sam," Dean held Sam's newly set leg with one tight hand and grabbed at fallen sticks in the mud wrapping them fallen with another bandana around Sam's leg. "It's okay now buddy-" He stood up and reached for Sam's hand. "You're okay, you made it, you'll live-"
Sam grabbed his brother's hand.
Dean pulled Sam's arm over his shoulder and lifted him up from the wet mud. "C'mon-"
Sam's vision sharpened into crystal clear clarity in the life that he shouldn't still be living. He swept this vision around everything, and saw, in the center of it all, his brother's outstretched hand, reaching out to pull him up.
Sam wrapped his hand around Dean's that was blood stained around the knuckles, and felt the solidness of it as Dean pulled him back onto his feet.
Dean stared at him in a way that couldn't be described, only felt. "You okay?"
Sam swallowed the bafflement of life that found them at this empty restaurant in the middle of nowhere on a patch of dirt. "I'll live- you?"
"I'm awesome," Dean returned in something that wanted to be his normal voice, rusty from disuse. A moment of hope because he hadn't done it. "Except I think I just killed Death-"
Neither of them said anything for long moments, letting the emptiness that existed except for them both echo around them like live beings.
Sam stared at the pile of what used to be Death himself, not even sure how that was possible, or what that now meant. But that existed in the later. And he existed in the right now, with Dean.
"Dean-"
"I'm sorry-"
Their words tumbled over each other like bricks falling off a house that was being demolished, leaving them standing in a haze of dusty fog in the aftermath of its destruction.
"Don't-"
Dean stared at Sam with more grief than should ever exist within the whole of humanity, let alone the face of one, single man. He backed away with raised hands, eyes full of sorrow. "Sammy I'm sorry-"
"Dean please, don't," Sam stepped over the rubble created by their fight moments ago, staring at Dean across the space that divided them, everything rubbed so raw it hurt, felt like it was bleeding. "You didn't-it wasn't you. I'm still here- And so are you-"
A splitting crack boomed above them like thunder and a flash of something blinding shone through the wood of the roof. They moved their eyes away from each other and up to the wooden ceiling.
Dean listened as the noise repeated itself. "Does that seem right to you?"
The noise boomed, louder than all the previous times. A blinding jaggedness like a lightning bolt blew down through the roof and zigzagged over and down until whatever it was struck Dean's arm like electricity; dropping him in half a heartbeat in pain that pinned him down to the back of the bar like he was nailed there. Hot white pain swelled through his muscles, growing hotter and fiercer, like his arm was going to explode. And just when he thought that it was going to explode; just when he thought that to spare his brother, the Universe wasn't sparing him, the hot light and the pain moved up and away like it was connected to a conduit electrical source and vanished up through the hole it was cast down from.
And for the first time in nearly two years, Dean's forearm was bare. He blinked, closed his eyes like he had fallen into a delusion, and rubbed at the unfamiliar feel of smooth skin as the last remnants of what was the Mark faded away under the pad of his thumb.
"Dean-"
Sam finally approached after a moment that felt like a dare; and Dean felt the calloused grip of Sam's hands encircling his forearm.
Sam's rough edged fingers roamed over the intact, unmarred flesh of Dean's arm. He breathed in the same stunned, self-aware gasp of what something meant after it was fully seen, not hiding the breath he had waited two years to release.
Dean moved back and away from Sam's grip and walked forward across the creaking floorboards in a moment of a dazed stumble, like he had closed his eyes at night, only to have opened them into something blinding that had robbed him of clear vision.
Sam moved behind him at a steadier pace, boots thudding heavy behind, then beside Dean. They both took stumbled steps until they were on the wooden porch outside; what hadn't been a choice of existence for either of them until moments before.
"This is good Dean," Sam closed the door behind them, a mundane, useless action that he did anyway for a reason that he didn't know, no one was going to rob a place that was empty. "This is good," Sam let out every breath he had held in for the past two years. "The Mark is off your arm," even as he said it, Sam could barely believe those words left his mouth. "Nothing weird happened," he reached a hand into denim pockets and pulled out a jangle of metal, holding it out to Dean, erasing the message of the note from his mind. "You got your baby back-"
Dean stared at Sam in a way that suggested that he had two heads growing out of his eyes as the metal of his keys fell into his hand. "Oh yeah, I'm sure everything's perfectly fine-"
Their movement mirrored each other as they walked down the wooden steps at the same pace. When they reached the last step before the packed dirt, a crackled, splitting sound tore above their heads, like the clay shingles of the restaurant's roof had slid off.
The cracking sound bounced off the roof and was borne upwards into the sky that had wrapped itself into a haze of clouds while they had forgotten about the world.
The crackle grew into a hot and blinding pink burst of energy that hurled in a parallel shock across the gray clouds.
"What the?-" Sam only had half a moment to utter an incomplete swear before the energy that was above them hit the ground in cloud-to-ground formation no more than twenty feet away from them with such a shock that the earth rumbled and ripped apart at the site of impact.
There was another half minute to try and understand what had just happened before it happened again only a handful of yards away from the first point.
And again.
And again.
And again and again and again, over ten fold, in such rapid fire succession that gripped the world in white hot noise.
Sam turned to the blinding light that moved too fast for him to keep track of, then turned to his brother. "What did Death call this?"
Finally it all just stopped.
Dean stared out over the quiet with the anticipation of someone who knew that things never just stopped. The air hummed and vibrated with energy. "The Darkness."
The ground split upwards at each place the pink electric lighting had made impact, shooting up streams of blackness that rose over fifty feet in the air, converging in a perfect arch, like a fountain made of Demon smoke and Night.
They watched as each point joined together until it became a single thing; a mass of complete darkness that rose up from an empty field surrounded by a thick tree line. The blackness swelled, and grew, and rolled down the field, snapping farm built fences and trees like they were toothpick sculptures.
Dean eyed the destruction that was ripping apart everything in front of them, moving, closer and closer. "Get in the car-"
"Yeah-"
Dean didn't look, he reached, until some part of his finger made contact with Sam, until he felt the wind by his fingertips that said Sam moved.
They both ran until they slammed their hands into the metal of the Impala doors, opening them wide and hurled themselves inside.
Dean roared the car alive and reversed in a hard circle - a hard jerk rattled the entire tailgate.
Dean threw his door open and saw the back wheel half drowned in stagnant water and sticky mud. He leveled his foot on the gas and the wheel spun wildly with a squeal of rubber. But the ground was too damp from the hard rain to give any traction to pull the wheel up out of the hole, spinning it in deeper with flies of mud. He opened the door wider, to jump and lift the bumper of the car out to free the wheel, when he felt a hard grip on the inside of his elbow over where the Mark had once been.
"Dean-"
Dean turned at the sound of Sam's call, and Sam's grip on his arm. He looked up and over at the sight of the Darkness moving like a Pyroclastic volcanic flow, picking up speed with each thing it removed to hinder its path.
Dean took his foot of the gas and closed the door, watching with Sam, who hadn't let go of his arm. This time it wasn't the Mark, but instead the pulse of his forearm that raced at the pressure of his brother's gripping fingers.
The energy of the Darkness moved closer and closer to them like an erratic heartbeat.
"Close your eyes-" Dean watched the Darkness swallow the distance between it and them until there was no distance, only seconds before impact. He turned to Sam, moving his grip to Sam the way Sam did to him. "Sammy close your eyes!" He pushed back hard with the flat of his hand until Sam's taller frame was down against the side door and the dash, not letting go of his brother, keeping Sam's head pinned down.
Dean watched as the seconds were swallowed away in darkness.
Four.
The Darkness raced towards the Impala with a speed that was too fast to measure.
Three.
It was only hand spans away from the tires.
Two.
It licked the edges of the bumper.
"Dean!"
One.
Dean threw himself forward, arms flying up over the top of Sam's head; closing his eyes over the flesh of Sam's neck as the Darkness swallowed the last of the day in a heavy squeal of blackness.
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End.
R/R Please.