DISCLAIMER: Supernatural belongs to the CW Network and to the fascinating mind of Kripke.
A/N: Written in Sam's POV, set after Bloodlust but before Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. I was just fascinated by what Sam must've felt like to see Dean kill that vampire with…uh…gusto. I've never written from Sam's POV, but hey, there's a first time for everything.
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LOST
Sam Winchester was all grown up now. It was possible he might have still grown one more inch in the past year, possible that his hair was even curlier and unrulier, possible that his voice had still become deeper, his shoulders broader, his eyes colder.
Yeah, Sam was all grown up.
But that didn't mean that he still couldn't be afraid.
Although to be honest, Sam wasn't afraid of any thing in particular. No…he'd seen too much to really be afraid. He was more often wary than afraid. He knew that the things he and his brother hunted could be destroyed. It was just a matter of finding out how. He was pragmatic like that. He was the sensible one, here.
No, what terrified Sam was something intangible.
It couldn't be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched. Not really. But it felt tangible. He could see it in the way his eyes were dimmer when he looked in the mirror. Or in the tears that he tried to hide. He could hear it in the way the blood pounded through him, a roar in his ears. He could taste the rusty, tangy, metallic tang of it in his mouth. He could feel it in the lump in his throat, and in the way his gut tightened, twisted and turned. Hell, he could smell his own fear.
All of that at the sight of his brother, Dean.
Sam was afraid of Dean.
Ever since Dad died, Dean hadn't been the same. He knew that there was something inside his brother that just kept eating away at him. A secret. An emotion. He didn't know. He just knew that it was changing Dean.
Oh, he could tell that his brother was trying to be the same guy. He smiled like the old Dean. He laughed like the old Dean. Hell, he even said the same kinds of wisecracks and jokes the old Dean used to.
But that was just all on the surface. Putting up a show, just like the old Dean did, too. But this time, it was too good of a show not to put Sam on edge.
Who the hell smiled so much after their Dad's death? Who says shitty jokes in the face of everything and laugh out loud like he didn't have a goddamned care in the world just a few weeks after watching their father burn to ashes?
It was a good show.
But that wasn't what scared Sam.
He had seen behind the curtains of that show. And it was dark. And it was scary inside.
Sam stared out the window of the Impala as they sped through another lonely highway. He watched the scenery pass by in a blur of colors. But what he really saw was the way Dean had killed that vampire. The blood splattered on Dean's face. The maniacal glow in his eyes. The ugly twist of his lips. The satisfaction on his face.
And then death in his eyes when he finally looked up at Sam.
It was like, for a second, Dean had died.
And Sam…well hell, he'd never been so fucking scared in his life. He had looked at Dean with the kind of horror he only looked at the things he hunted. He had looked at Dean like he was a killer. And Sam knew that his whole world would come crashing down on him if he ever lost Dean like that.
He'd seen those damned Star Wars movies. The goddamned Dark Side of the Force. Hah! If they only knew what darkness really was.
Darkness, the kind that was pitch black, the kind where there wasn't a single glimmer of light, the kind where you couldn't even see your own hand in front of your face…the kind of darkness where you could easily get lost in—that was the kind of darkness he saw inside Dean.
His eyes had no light.
And Sam was so scared that Dean was lost in the darkness that even if he reached a hand out to help him, his brother wouldn't see it.
That terror gnawed at him painfully when he saw Dean laughing with Gordon later that night—the laugh that was so deep it was hollow. He was afraid that Dean was accepting the darkness that was eating him up. His eyes, they reflected the lights inside that bar in a way that made Sam think that none of that light was going in, just bouncing back out. His smile was so wide it hurt Sam's face to look at that smile. In fact, Dean had smiled that night like he wanted it to hurt.
And Sam couldn't take it. So he'd left. He'd been too afraid to look at his brother at that moment. The hunt had been a kill. The moment that should have brought no more than a sense of probity, maybe even justice, had become a moment of raw pleasure for the kill. And then there was the celebration with Gordon. The cheers, the jeers. The noise that his brother was making was a little too loud.
So loud, maybe to mask the utter silence that had followed his kill.
Sam rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. That had been weeks ago—the hunt where Sam had caught sight of the darkness inside Dean. His brother had admitted he wasn't all right. That next day, just as the sun was rising, in typical Dean fashion, he'd apologized by demanding that Sam hit him back. Yeah, right. That wasn't how he dealt with his shit—he wasn't Dean. But for a moment, he'd been hopeful. For a moment, he'd thought that Dean's admission would start to fix things, thought that the darkness didn't have to get worse.
But no. Turns out, Dean's admission of being confused was the extent of it. He didn't seem to want to do anything more than admit that. In fact, sometimes, he outright lied and said he was just fine.
Sure, he could tell that his brother was trying to cope, to push away the darkness. He worked really hard to keep the show going…the smiling, the laughing, the wise-cracking.
But it was still there. Every time they hunted something, Dean wanted the kill. He wanted to deliver the blow, to fire the shot, to slip the knife, to snap the bones. And it was always in those moments that Sam lost Dean to the darkness.
And in each moment, his fear grew bigger, until it became hard to breathe past that lump in his throat, until his eyes forgot what it was like to look at his brother without tears blurring his vision, until he bit his own lip so hard that he tasted the fear in his blood. Because after every kill, Dean looked at him with dead eyes.
And every time Sam wanted to talk about this, Dean shut down and became a blank wall. Sometimes a smiling blank wall, lying through his teeth. Sometimes an angry blank wall deflecting Sam's questions with cutting remarks. Sometimes he just became silent, like a black hole sucking in everything Sam threw at him, giving nothing back.
There was nothing he could do, but wait and keep on trying to stick his hand out to see if Dean would find it in the dark. If he even wanted to find it. Sam glanced at his brother briefly, then quickly looked away. It was getting harder and harder to look at Dean. He became harder and harder to recognize.
And that scared Sam. That Dean would no longer be Dean. That he would succumb to the darkness eating him up inside, and one day, when Sam glanced over at the other side of the Impala, it wouldn't be his brother sitting there anymore, but a stranger.
And when that happened, he knew that he would fall into darkness, too.
Because Sam understood that when Dad died, Dean lost his compass and his guiding light. In the same way he would, if he lost Dean.
And Sam would never outgrow that fear.
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A/N2: It's short, I know. But it's sort of just like a really long drabble. I just had to get it out.