Prompt from BlueRiverSteel and written over the course of vacation, mostly by hand and without the benefit of internet access or spellcheck, which led to a week-long debate between my husband and I as to whether or not "misgauged" is a word. I'm happy to say I came out on the winning side of that argument. :P
This is one of those missing scenes that I'd always thought I'd eventually write, but never had anything come to me. Turns out I just needed a friendly nudge, and a few days under the Caribbean sun.
The Heaviest Weight
He doesn't think he ever truly loses consciousness, feels every horrible second and inch of the loud, vicious impact, of his body bending and shifting against a soundtrack of cracking glass and crunching metal as the Impala is mercilessly shoved off of the road.
It seems like an eternity passes before they come to a stop, before Sam jerks against the seat and orders his shocked lungs to inflate. His ears are ringing and he feels oddly numb, but knows it won't last. He lifts his heavy head in time to see a shadow passing in front of the car, drawing closer.
Sam's instincts scream threat even as the rest of him is just beginning to register OW. His hand scrabbles reflexively against the seat, fingers feeling out warm splashes of fresh blood and the jagged edges of broken glass before finally closing around the grip of the Colt, somehow not dislodged in the crash, still on the seat where he'd hastily tossed it as he'd slid behind the wheel.
The door is ripped free of its hinges with a screech of protesting metal, and Sam commands his stiff fingers to tighten around the grip, brings the gun across his body. "Back." There's blood in his throat, his voice thick with it. "Or I'll kill you, I swear to God."
"You won't." The demon inside tugs at the strings, twists the older man's weathered features into a cruel, knowing smile. "You're saving that bullet for someone else."
But right now, Sam's not thinking of starting the fight over. Not thinking one bullet left or revenge, or even justice. Neither Dad nor Dean has audibly moved, or issued the expected, characteristic growled threat, and all he can think is that he's the only line of defense between this piece of shit and his family.
Determination and resignation fall over him. Dad's not the only one who's misgauged Sam's priorities – they all have. He knows now that he won't blink before making the same call Dean did, before sacrificing not only the life of this man, but also their last chance of killing the yellow-eyed monster who took Mom and Jess, to keep them safe.
No, sir. Not before everything.
A chilly whisper of fear tempts Sam from the edges of his awareness, but there's too much at stake to give in to it. As he cocks the gun, his hand trembles from exhaustion and exertion, not nerves. His voice is steady, his face stony. "You wanna bet?"
There's a tense beat, and then his antagonist makes off like the low-level chickenshit he is. The howl is both pain and frustration, both the man and the demon, and the tortured sound sends a chill down Sam's spine even as he sags in relief, watching the choking black cloud funnel upward to disappear on the night sky. The borrowed man drops out of sight, but Sam doesn't pay much attention to his fall.
The ensuing quiet seems oppressive and suffocating and telling, and with the immediate danger dispensed of, the Colt feels too heavy to simply be a weapon, feels like pressure and choice and responsibility, and too damn weighty for Sam to hold up a second longer.
His hand falls to the seat beside his leg, the gun slipping from suddenly lax fingers that are stained with his brother's blood beneath slicks of his own. The fear pokes at him from the back of his mind, and a dozen aches begin to settle all over his body. He swallows, rolls his pounding head against the seatback. "Dad?" The first anxious thought he has, despite that bloody residue from Dean flaked on his hands.
"Did I do this?"
Sam registers the man's presence beside the car, hears his voice but can't assign much value to his words or tone, because Dad is a blurry, unmoving shape on his right, and he isn't answering. "Dad!"
Still nothing, and with those implications, the fear pushes bodily to the forefront.
"Dean?" But he knows in his tripping heart and his leaden gut that he won't get a response. Dean was…in rough shape, back at the cabin. Couldn't keep his feet any more than he could bite back his groans of pain, blood bubbling from his lips with each short, shallow breath. Eyes drifting closed in the car, looking pale and agonized in the backseat, right before –
"Dean!" It's a desperate, frightened call that feels ripped from Sam, leaves his throat raw.
Over the rapid, surely earsplitting thump thump of his own heart, Sam can't tell if either man is stirring at his calls – or even breathing – but he has to comfort himself that he would know otherwise. But the fear has been acknowledged now, and moves to settle over him like a thick wool blanket, stifling and itchy. He shoves up from the seat and overbalances, nearly face-plants into the steering wheel before he can course-correct, gets a shaky hand against the blood-slicked dash and grips, fingernails scratching.
Beside him, Dad groans, and Sam spins too fast on the seat, his head and stomach slow in catching up. He swallows roughly and waits for the nausea to settle and the spots to clear, then sees his father slowly blinking himself awake. "Dad? Hey. Dad."
His father stares with pain-glazed, uncomprehending eyes for all of ten seconds before the combined ragging of his shot leg and bloody head drag his lids closed on a low, wounded exhale.
"Dad?" Sam's voice is a hesitant, scared whisper of sound that falls on unhearing ears. He grips the steering wheel with his left hand and jams two fingers at his father's pulse point, satisfies himself with the steady beat there.
He nods and drops his hand away, lightly patting John's arm in a spot he hopes won't hurt. Glass tinkles and vinyl squeaks as he sits back against the seat. His brain feels swollen and hot inside a too-fragile skull, and it fucking hurts, but he can't spare more than the space of a breath or two, because…Dean.
Fuck. Dean.
"Dean?" he calls again, but quieter this time, tentative and dreading. Not wanting to miss the smallest sign of movement.
The sun is an obvious presence on the horizon now, but time is irrelevant. The door is already open – already gone, ripped demonically-free of its well-worn hinges and tossed aside – and Sam does little more than tumble off of the bench and through the open space when his brother doesn't answer. He hits the ground awkwardly and hard, uses the side of the car to scramble back to his feet only to find his progress halted by a warm, heavy hand against his chest.
"Stay still, son. I – I've called for help. A – Are they…?"
Sam shoves the stammering man away and falls against the warped frame of the Impala. He uses the now-unfamiliar curves of the car to keep his feet, palms his way along the wide door to his brother's side. Dean was in a bad way already, and Sam's heart skips a beat, thinking of yellow eyes and too much blood and Dad, please.
His heel crunches in the glass that litters the ground and his stomach lurches at the sight, as well as the implications. Dean's head is propped on the frame where the window should be, his body jammed against the door in unnatural angles that have to mean broken bones and internal damage, and there's blood everywhere.
A thick, ominous trail of crimson pumps sluggishly from a deep gash bisecting his forehead, slips along the curve of his nose and drips from his chin in faint plips to the floor mat. Sam can't tell if his brother is breathing, and he's afraid to do so much as release one puff of his own against the bent car door, terrified of displacing any precious weight that might be stemming blood flow or keeping Dean in one piece.
He leans in cautiously, eyes tracking the dark blood dropping from his brother's face, and thinks he might vomit. There's a terror-driven tremble in his hand as Sam gingerly reaches out to secure the reassurance of a thrumming pulse below Dean's jaw.
Waits.
It's there, but faint, and so, so slow. Too slow. Dean doesn't flinch, or twitch, or show any sign of life or awareness that Sam is there, so he leans in a bit closer to comfort himself that is brother is breathing.
A concerning pattern of catches and whistles that scream of things that are wrong inside, things well beyond his little brother's pathetic-seeming scope of capabilities. But he's breathing, and Sam melts against the side of the car in short-lived relief. The ever-increasing weight he feels pressing down on him has grown beyond fear or worry or pain. It's obligation; a suffocating sense of duty he's felt before but never fully embraced.
He wants to rebel, to reject the pressure. Shove it away and head for the hills, but Dad and Dean can't bail him out of this one. They're hurt, bad, and need for him to keep it together and be strong.
A new brand of terror begins to churn in Sam's gut, the weight of his family on his shoulders.
He takes a step toward the front of the car, hand slapping at the warped, still-warm hood as he slips to his knees and vomits in the dry grass. He thinks he might he see the far-off strobe of approaching emergency lights blending in with the oddly haloing sunrise, or it could just be the blood running into his eyes, distorting his vision.
He head is pounding, spinning, and when he wipes the blood away, more streams in to take its place. It's more nuisance than anything, and less blood than Dad has shed. Much less than Dean. Sam's left eye was already blurry and uncooperative before the crash, and he blinks furiously to clear it.
Concussion, he knows, and that's not great, but he knows what to do. Knows what the protocols are. Sam Winchester. Thursday. George Bush. W.
But Dad and Dean are hurt much worse, and he doesn't know what the protocols are.
Suddenly, he isn't alone. A hand at his elbow, a voice in his ear.
"Sir, you need to let us help you."
"No, m'okay," Sam protests, pushing himself upright and stumbling away a few steps, only to trip over his own feet and hit the dirt in spectacular fashion, heaving up whatever might have been left in his stomach. By the time he's finished, the hands are back and he doesn't have much choice in the matter because he can't get either eye to focus and his head is bleating with pain.
He finds himself flat on his back before he knows it's happening and accepts the faint, red haze overhead as evidence that help has arrived. Sam stares up at the sun-lightened sky and hears blades whirring and metal creaking as Dad and Dean are extricated from the choking confines as the mangled Impala. Dean's gonna be pissed, he thinks groggily.
And then, they're okay. He feels gauzy and disconnected, and allows himself to relax against the stretcher as well as he can, given the collar and straps. They're gonna be okay. Something soft and cool is placed over his bad eye, he registers a pinch on the crook of his elbow, and he might lose some time after that. Things get hazy and light, every weight lifted.
A sudden whine of medical equipment and a tense flurry of activity in the periphery of his good eye brings the world back into stark relief and sends his heart into overdrive. Brings the fear screaming back.
Sam tries to speak, manages a dry croak. He works some spit into his mouth, throws everything he's got behind his voice. "Tell me if they're okay!"
"You have to stay still," is the barked response.
"Are they even alive?" He'll scream himself hoarse until he gets an answer, can't lose every damn thing he's got left to this demon.
He can't see either of them. Not Dad, not Dean, and he knows just enough to know that what's going on around him – the sounds, the jargon, the urgency – means things are bad. It all comes crashing back; the pain, the duty, and that odd new fear, striking in waves and soul-crushing in their intensity.
A chilly zip of drugs puts a stopper on the pain, and the owner of the terse female voice is clearly running the show. But no one will give him an answer, machines keep going haywire, and he can't seem to shake the fear, the heaviest weight of them all.