Written for my lovely internet friend HBKDEANRKO and the prompt she sent me. I won't share the prompt for fear of spoiling the plot. As you all likely have guessed someone probably couldn't even pay me to write a one shot lol. So not sure how long this will be. Hope we all enjoy! ;);)

BLACK AS CAN BE

Chapter 1.

He's lying in his bed when his eyes open. His ceiling is dark and the room cold around him. The bunker silent, the halls outside shadowed and eery. He's scared, he doesn't know why. His heart is heavy with foreboding as he sits upright and slowly throws the covers off his body and places bare feet on the cold floor.

Sam blinks trying to focus in the gloomy light, he opens his door and stumbles out into the passageway. It's too quiet and it works Sam up, his body buzzing with painful tension, his senses so alive everything feels too much.

"Dean?" He calls into the still darkness. Afraid to be alone but afraid of what he feels he may find if he finds Dean. The library is uncharacteristically dark. Sam can barely make out the gloomy figures of the chairs and tables, there's a red glow coming from the map room and Sam holds a hand out in front of him as he makes his way there.

Nearly trips down the stair in the blackness, but freezes with what his eyes take in. The stuttered gasp is caught in his throat, eyes wide and wild. His brain telling him this is impossible, all his senses screaming at him nononononononono...

His brother lays still across the steps. His head at an odd angle, his hands limp and open, palms up. Green eyes glassy and dim, sightless on the ceiling, lips violently crimson with blood, the liquid already drying tacky in the rusty facial hair by his mouth. Sam falls to his knees hands hovering over the form.

The gaping hole there in Dean's chest slaps him with the horrific familiarness of it. The death wound, the last blow...the blood has already stopped flowing, his brother is gone.

The sobs are what comes first, breaths that get stuck behind the lump in his throat come out in bursts wetted with the cold, unconscious tears on his face. Long fingers tangle themselves in blood-damp clothes, the other hand pressed lovingly, tenderly against that beloved face.

"No, no, no," under his breath, "Dean please..." he breaks off with the iciness of Dean's skin his body rebelling against this reality, shaking comes to his hands, his vision swims, (he feels a phantom ache in his jaw where Dean clocked him so efficiently he'd knocked Sam out cold.)

Sam gathers his brother's corpse into his arms, holding that coldness to his warmth in some silly hope that he can pass it on.

"You didn't say goodbye," he whispers into bloody hair. "You didn't let me say goodbye."

And god as he mourns, as he sucks in tearful mouths of air it's the smell of his brother all around. His clothes, his soap...his blood. The irony familiar smell of his blood rich in Sam's nose as he manages to get an arm under Dean's knees and the other around his back.

He fells like a soldier stumbling back home from war. But instead of plunder and bounty he carries all he had left back with him. Carries his life, his brother, his best friend...his soulmate in his arms. The war they fought together battled and won...but Dean doesn't get to see their victory, Dean paid for it. Paid for it with his very blood. And that's makes it no victory, no victory at all.

When he lays Dean on his bed he feels it's the final goodbye. It takes all the strength in him to pull himself away from the cold but oh so right form. It's not him anymore, he thinks, he's gone by now.

"I'm too late," he says staring at Dean's stony face. "You're gone by now."

He looks away over his shoulder as his hand reaches and brushes over those soft lashes and shuts the unseeing eyes that still glisten green and bright even in death. Fingers press hard into his temples as he gazes at his brother. He grabs one of Dean's lax cold hands and holds it tight, presses it to the hot flesh of his lips and tries to breathe warmth back into it.

Dean lays there peacefully, god, he looks so peaceful...so relieved, so happy.

"Please Dean, please don't leave me." He mumbles, because Dean wouldn't do that. Even if it was easier, even it made him happy...Dean wouldn't leave Sam.

"Come back to me, come back to me, I know you can," he whispers as he tastes tears on his lips, as he watches them drop to Dean's knuckles and roll down and away. "Wake up Dean," he whispers, "We weren't done yet, there's still do much for us..."

And then Dean does.

Eyes black as can be.

...

Sam jerks awake, sitting up rigidly straight by the time he's fully conscious. His chest heaves with big breaths, sweat sticking his shirt to his back and stomach which is rolling unpleasantly. Trembling hands go over his face and through sweat soaked hair with breaths stuttering from between his lips. He can feel his eyes dilating and going back down again, the shock and scare slowly fading with each logical thought.

Justadreamdeanissafedeanisalivedeanisherewithyou...

It's the same dream. Everything time.

His mind forcing him to relive the agony as some sort of perverted justice. You didn't say goodbye. Dean's cold lifeless body a reminder to never shut his brother out again, to remind him that every moment with Dean was a gift, a second chance.

He doesn't dream of hell hounds anymore like he used to, nor of a nothingness created by not knowing, by his brother just being simply gone. And that was it wasn't it? It was all his worst nightmares wrapped in to one all too real happening.

A day when Dean was torn from him, his body torn apart...his heart stopped, his blood soaking everything. And then he was simply gone. His body, the last thing Sam had left, was just gone. Just no Dean. Left nothing behind, no clue, no apology just a few words that shattered Sam's heart and whole world irreparably.

Sammy, let me go.

And Sam's answering question was the same every time...

How?

Sam kicks the covers off him too hot, too close, too confining and sighs deep which makes him cough as he throws his legs over the edge of the bed and stands shakily. He opens his door and steps out into the halls which are too dark for his liking, the dim lighting way to close to that of his dream.

He doesn't realize what he's doing until he's standing outside Dean's room. He needs confirmation, assurance truth touch...Dean is alive and with him. The bunker is too quiet for Dean to be anything but asleep so he turns the door handle and opens it silently, steps into the dark coolness of his brother's room.

The familiar, homey, comforting smell surrounds him and soothes his heart, his pulse slowing and his muscles relaxing for the first time since he awoke. He stands for a moment gathering himself in the comfort and safety of Dean's space before walking towards the bed and standing unsure beside it.

"Dean?"

He asks softly, expecting a gruff, sleepy 'what?' that he doesn't get.

"Dean?" He asks sharper, his body language sharpening before Sam's instincts scream at him wrong! He switches the light on to find Dean's bed empty as can be.

Sam's heart constricts with grief and terrifying deja vu, his fingers stretching listlessly in the cold, cold sheets of Dean's bed. Where his brother should be safe, warm, alive, there with words and touches to tell Sam

imhereitsokaybaddream?itwasjustadreamneverleavingyousamwildhorsescouldntdragmeaway

He closes his eyes and swallows thickly trying to define between dream and reality. Where was Dean, where the hell was his brother?

...tbc

Leave a REVIEW if you want to know too!? ;);)

im sorry to be posting so much...I just have so much content and a lot of stories going on. Don't get tired of me please :):)