Title: Words Needed
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: 7x02 reflection. Dean didn't have a word for the sound of Humpty Dumpty shattering.
Notes: So much happened in 7x02, but the biggest kick in the chest for me was the burning of Bobby's house. That got me thinking about the definition of 'home' in the Winchesters' lives, which then expanded to how so many of their standard words and definitions have been systematically stripped away…..and so this became a Dean POV on the episode, and on falling apart when you don't have the words to describe it. I hope I did him justice. Thank you for reading and thank you to those reviewers I am unable to respond to personally via private message. I truly appreciate your support.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Dean needed new words.
Calling their current surroundings a "post-apocalyptic mess" earlier at Bobby's had certainly been proper usage of the "a" word, but later, watching Sam fall apart with a loaded weapon holding the shaky line between hallucination and reality, Dean realized he needed something different; because 'post-Apocalyptic' with a capital "A" might have worked for the world as a whole in the general, biblical sense of the term, but right then, for Dean in that warehouse, he was far from post-anything. He was staring down the barrel and into the lost eyes of the Apocalypse, his personal Apocalypse – where Sam was lost completely to something Dean couldn't fix….and he had no word for the terrifying end of his world, the end of Sam, beyond those four syllables from Revelation. No word for the sound of Humpty Dumpty shattering.
Humpty must've been an only child because that rhyme never did have a word describing what it was like to watch him fall. It was just….Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…but Sam had no wall anymore, that's why he was having this great fall….another fall…..and why Dean was falling too. Another word insufficiently used for the myriad ways a body could plummet – 'fall' into the Pit, 'fall' to the ground, 'fall' to pieces, 'fall' into despair and alcohol and more inadequate words that never eased the pain. Dean wondered when things had gotten so messed up in his life that biblical passages written thousands of years ago remained relevant, but simple children's rhymes no longer had the right words.
But even the Bible wasn't without fault, because one of its core words - 'hell' - one that had so many meanings for him and Sam….even that wasn't terrifying enough for what Dean was living now. Like Sam, Dean had been there….but Alastair, fire, torture…none of it seemed like hell anymore because pleading with Sam to believe in the fact that his flesh and blood brother was real, hurting Sam physically to save him from worse pain psychologically….this was hell. Dean had told Sam that he was out of the Cage…but maybe Sam wasn't out and Dean was right there with him. Maybe neither of them had ever really gotten out at all. The only thing Dean knew for sure was that the word itself wasn't enough – for any of it. He watched Sam shatter into pieces that even the King's men couldn't put back together…..and realized that as much as he wanted that nursery rhyme to fit, wanted simple words and a simple metaphor to deal with this horrifically complex…this…..it just wouldn't work, because the words were wrong. Sam was way too freaking tall to be an egg, as scrambled as his insides might be, and while the Impala may have been a 'King's horse', Dean was definitely no 'King's man.' Besides, how could he put someone, anyone, back together again when he himself was crumbling too? No, this had to be hell…..but if it was, what were they supposed to call the place where it all began? What had that been?
It wasn't just the big words about the world's ending and falling into eternal damnation - even the little words didn't work anymore. 'Loss' didn't work for Bobby's house burning, 'grief' for the fact that the man might be gone, 'losing it' for Dean spilling his suicidal and fratricidal plan to an answering machine that may have been the last time he'd ever hear the voice of one of his only remaining human homes. Even 'home' didn't work because, for a man who hadn't really known a home since he was four years old, Dean sure had a lot of them – some short term and gone, like Pastor Jim's, the Roadhouse, Lisa's…. others longer term and stable – the Impala…..and Bobby's – a house more home than the one in Lawrence had ever been. The one home that had never been destroyed. Until now.
Dean couldn't even pray to, or swear at, a God he still wasn't sure ever existed for the words he needed, because even that word no longer meant what it used to – with Cas's childish usurpation, Death's dry denial of the angel's self-proclaimed status, and Purgatory's dark secrets overshadowing it all, the name, the Father, the word 'God' was lost, the sounds without meaning.
Dammit, even after a day of Leviathans revealing themselves, little brothers hallucinating Lucifer, homes burning, family disappearing, legs breaking, and Sam ending up physically and psychologically shattered on the ground next to him….even Dean's first thought, their standard fall-back of 'we're totally screwed'….even those words were laughably inadequate.
Dean tried more words that didn't work, words that failed to wake Sam, words such as "you need to carry me" that didn't even come close to what Dean really needed to say….until he finally stopped the frustratingly useless syllables and fell to action. To training and last resort protocol. To three numbers that were the first thing associated with 'panic' and 'need' and 'help' for everyone except them.
"911, what's your emergency?"
'Emergency.' Even that word didn't come close anymore.
Suffocating within the nearby press of black Leviathan ooze and the ashes of the last safe place he knew under an even blacker sky, Dean wondered what combination of sounds went past 'emergency' and to where he actually was now.
The question came again. "911, what's your emergency?"
Dean knew he didn't have the words – but he was a Winchester. When they couldn't or wouldn't communicate with words, they did it through actions – a look, a touch, maybe even a sound. So that's what he used. A sound. Answered the dispatcher with a broken, empty, half-sobbed, half-manic huff of air.
Sam would have understood. Would have known what it meant, what it was, how to respond.
But Sam was unconscious, the dispatcher wasn't a Winchester, and Dean was beyond knowing.
It might have been a laugh.
He wasn't sure.
Guess he needed a new word for that too.