Written for prompt: Dark from LJ community spn_30snapshots.
H(a)unted by Whilom
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." – Nietzsche
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It was dark.
Of course it's dark, idiot, he could almost hear Dean saying. It's a big hole in the ground. Quit staring and get over here and help me with the salt.
But this one seemed especially dark. Six feet of moist dirt was opened up before him and a rotting coffin was a gray lump at the bottom of the pit. He could just catch a glimpse of white through the splinters of the coffin and imagined the skeleton, bony hands folded over its ribs, empty sockets staring up at him, into him.
A hand clapped him on the shoulder and he jumped.
"You okay?"
Sam swallowed and turned his head to take in his brother's concerned face. He held lighter fluid in one hand and was digging through his jacket pockets for matches, reminding Sam of what they were doing there in the first place.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Here, let me." Sam took the lighter fluid and liberally doused the coffin before tossing in the whole packet of flaming matches.
He'd probably used more than he needed to—but at least it wasn't dark anymore.
00000
Simple salt and burn.
No hunts came easier which meant that usually Dean avoided them—not enough action—but this time he was eager to fill up the grave and get out of there for another reason.
Sam was perched at the very edge of the pit, eyes fixed on something at the bottom. Dean had already glanced down and could barely make out the shadowed coffin. Nothing to hold Sam's interest. Except—Dean looked between Sam and the hole again. Well, Sam was maybe doing a little mind-melding with the lonely skeleton down there, but Dean highly doubted that even with Sam's whole psychic deal—
Crap.
It was still new to Dean, new to both of them, but the visions were sporadic and Dean knew how to deal, didn't probe what shouldn't be probed. But Sam had always been one for poking and prodding. And right now, with the standing and staring, Dean was thinking they'd had enough internal reflection for one day.
They'd finish this up and go home. They'd keep the bathroom light on all night. He'd tease Sam about his psychic stuff to let him know he was sharing the load and life would go on as normal. Or as normal as it could be when his little brother was seeing the future.
00000
Sam had always seen.
He had been the one to tangle himself in the victims' emotions, to choose cases based on how many they could save, to smile brightly at the grizzled truckers and past-their-prime waitresses they mixed with in the small diners scattered across the country. Sam had been the one who saw people, who looked past the dust and the weathered faces to find out what they were really saying. It was what had made him such a brilliant student at Stanford—would have made him a brilliant lawyer, Dean reflected, if ceiling fires hadn't gotten in the way.
But now Sam could see.
Not in the way Dean had learned how to handle. Not in the get in touch with your feelings kind of way or the let's ask questions of why and wherefore kind of way. Now it was seeing in the kind of way where Sam ended up in a ball on the floor, hands cramped around his head and eyes rolling or shut tight.
Which was why Dean tried to make sure there were no mirrors in the rooms they stayed in after he'd caught Sam staring at himself at three in the morning. Why he tried to shield Sam from view when the victims started getting teary. Why he started relaying every phone call he got—not just the ones relevant to the case. So that Sam would know that Dean was still on his side. So that Sam could see without getting hurt. Because, Dean figured, this new psychic stuff was just going to make seeing-Sam into super-seeing-Sam, crank up that freaky perception his brother had and make him feel the hurt that much more.
So Sam needed to see, to especially see, what Dean put in front of him: that he was still the same kid Dean had been keeping tabs on since forever, that there were times when Dean could handle the weepy moms or the clinging kids and Sam could take a backseat to the emotional rollercoaster, that Dean was checking up on the psychic stuff but he wasn't hiding anything from Sam—everything was out in the open, ready for prodding if need be. Heaven forbid there be prodding, but at least the option was there.
Dean was no philosopher, but he'd learned a thing or two between Sam's geek-love for high school AP classes and the books of lore he'd helped their dad pore over at night. And one of those things was something he'd copied down in his journal, something that had stuck out to him soon after he'd started hunting solo and which had taken on even more significance since Sam's first vision. Dean figured maybe Nietzsche didn't have all the answers, but he'd given a helpful piece of advice about Dean's little brother and what he was going through right now.
Sam hunted monsters. Hell, they both hunted monsters, it was the Winchester way, but Sam—Sam hunted monsters. And monsters hunted him.
Hunted. Haunted.
Sometimes, when Sam wasn't around, Dean tore off a piece of the cheap motel stationery and wrote down those two words. He looked at them and hated the tiny 'a' which separated the one from the other. He would have liked there to be more of a difference between the two, more of a distinction. He wanted more of a difference for Sam's sake.
He always burned the paper afterwards. He didn't want something else for Sam to see. That was the goal—no more abyss-gazing than necessary. Not too much looking for Sam. Sam had to look, it was part of who he was, he had to see or he wouldn't be Sam. But Dean was seeing too, watching, observing. Sam hunted monsters and Dean hunted them too. Sam gazed into the abyss and Dean gazed into Sam.
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They dumped the bags of salt and the shovels in the Impala's trunk, Dean nudging Sam's shoulder, saying something to see Sam crack a dimpled smile. He thought, maybe, the darkness receded just a little. He settled behind the steering wheel and revved the engine, Sam laughing at his side.
Yeah, he could handle keeping watch.