Still penniless.
AN: Inspired by certain scenes in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods". The mythology isn't precisely accurate, as far as I could tell after a brief bout of research, but what the heck. It makes for a good story.
Eagle stones
Sam was climbing.
He'd been doing so for what must, surely, have been an eternity. His muscles burned, limbs so heavy he could barely lit them. Mouth dry, parched, tongue swollen with it, vision often blurry. He hadn't rested, hadn't slept, had been forcing his eyes to stay open for so long he was no longer sure if they could be closed anymore.
Sam was climbing.
Every breath rattled through his throat, tore at it, ripped through lungs that felt over-used, as if he'd breathed too much, too long, and wasn't that a ridiculous thought?
Sam was climbing.
His forearms were streaked with blood: his own, running down from his raw palms, skin rubbed and worn and cut away. Creeping warm trails of blood that soaked, wet and heavy, into the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt at his elbows. Every movement of his fingers, no matter how slight, sent lines of agony through his hands, up his arms, but he flexed, and raised, and curled them into the next handhold without ever faltering.
Sam was climbing.
It had been so long now that his shoes, his favourite black sneakers, had shredded away, worn into nothingness with the scuff and scramble of thin rubber against unyielding sharp-edged hardness. By now, the soles of his feet were in no better shape than the palms of his hands; had Sam ever looked down, he would have seen his own bloody hand- and footprints following him up up up. he didn't look down. He didn't look back.
Sam was climbing.
The straps of his rucksack cut deeply into his shoulders. The weight of the contents was unbearable, and beyond the physical, in a way, but he needed it. If he got to the top without it, the climb would have been for nothing.
Sam was climbing.
It was a rock-face, a mountain, a tree-trunk as wide around as he was tall. It was a pile of glass shards, a hill forged of melted-down sword-blades, a slag-heap of shattered brick and loose rocks that shifted, rolled away, refused him purchase. It was a mountain of bones, and the handholds he curled his stiff bloody fingers into were the empty staring eye-sockets of bleached-white skulls.
Sam was climbing.
The top at last: an eyrie, a nest, a huge round bowl, filthy, filled with sticks and dead grass and the bones of prey. Knife in his hand, heavy and hurting against muscle, vein, sinew, bone.
The thunderbird was tall as he was, feathers deep dark brown, neck banded with white. Bluish sheen to its plumage, electric-blue that seemed to flicker and dance between its feathers, or was that Sam's imagination, exhausted as he was?
Either way, the bird slept, head tucked under its wing, oblivious to the intruder.
Its skull cracked with the ease of an eggshell hit with a fork. Now came the gruesome part. Sam dropped to his knees beside the huge carcass, forced his hands into the mess of blood and brains and bone shards.
It was like reaching into mud, or a vat of Jello: wet and clinging, oozing around his hands. He persevered, fingers pushing through the mess until they closed around a small stone, cold and hard. Sam pulled it out with an obscene wet squelch of sorts and held it up, clear, tawny brown, golden flames dancing in its depths.
The eagle stone, from the head of a thunderbird, that was said to perform more miracles than Sam could count, do anything he could imagine, the stories brought together over hundreds of years, collected from hundreds of peoples.
There was only one thing he wanted it for.
He stowed both stone and knife back in his rucksack and turned to climb down, every muscle, every sinew protesting at the idea, but he ignored them. By dawn, he must have returned.
Climbing down took no time at all. Sam seemed to blink once and then he was nearly on solid ground again, only a few feet above it. The way up had been the important part.
The sky was lightening, pale gold streaks creeping across it in the West. Sam knew he had to hurry. Fortunately, it wasn't far; the Impala soon loomed comfortingly out of the darkness. He dropped the rucksack, fumbled for the eagle stone, hands shaking, iron control over his body slipping away with every minute, aches and pains even more acute now than during the climb itself.
But then he had it in his bleeding skinless hands, and all that was left was to place it on his brother's chest, over his heart, just above his folded hands, and sit back and watch as the blood rushed back into Dean's beloved face, as life and light and laughter filled his eyes once more.
Somewhere, a demon was screaming; but whether in fear or anger, Sam couldn't tell and didn't care.