Fragment – chpt 2
by: sifi.
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"Dude what'd you do stay up half the night and make a list of interesting topics of discussion to start your day with?" Dean asked, his irritation mild but his curiosity sprouting blossoms.
"No Dean… I'm counting on you to keep my ass alive… so I need you sharp…" Sam recalled a moment from last year, not long after Jess's murder, when he hadn't been sleeping well and been plagued with nightmares. He knew what it felt like to be afraid to go to sleep.
"Well I already told you I don't remember the nightmares… I mean not entirely… just that whatever's going on in here," he tapped the side of his head, "I don't mind telling you… it's freakin' me out… and okay I'm not crazy about not being able to get some quality sleep, course if I had someone…" he stopped and sighed seeing the gentle upturn of Sam's mouth before jumping track and making himself too vulnerable. He had no fear of Sam seeing him hurt, he just couldn't take the look of pain, and the hatred for this life and its repercussions he saw in his baby brother's eyes. Still, I think he's really seeing all the good we do… I'm glad you're with me Sammy… I'm glad you didn't just take off after Dad… after… Gordon, and Andy, and that creepy s.o.b. that… he shuddered mentally, I'm glad you're still with me.
"You miss them both Dean, I do get it… I still miss dad… I keep expecting text-messaged coordinates… and knowing what little we DO know… that that yellow eyed son of a bitch has plans for me… and all the children like me… I feel guilty as hell…" Sam admitted, not realizing he too needed this catharsis.
"Yeah, well it's gonna be a long road to happy Sam… but we'll make it… long as I've got anything at all to say about it… we'll make it and we'll take that son of a bitch out along the way, you mark my words…" Dean vowed stonily.
Sam nodded, "I miss knowing she's out there for you… just a phone call away y'know?"
Dean nodded and swallowed the catch in his throat, "Yeah well…" he choked, "That's what happens when you get close to people Sam… haven't you been listening over the last year and a half?"
"Dean…" Sam grimaced glimpsing the war going on inside his brother. In his own way he's just as lonely as Alex Bentley was… at least she filled him up a bit… regular doses… he's like a tire with a slow leak… fill him up every few hundred miles and he's okay, he'll hold.
"It HAS been a helluva year… and NOT in a good way…I want to find her Sam… Whatever happened… she deserves for someone to know…" he admitted a lot more than Sam thought he might and his surprise showed on his face.
I've already got one big damn lie I'm hiding from you Sammy… I promised myself I was going to try and let you shoulder a little more… we're not kids anymore, we're all we've got and I'm sure as hell not going to do anything to jeopardize either one of us! Except by keeping that lie…well, yeah I know I'll tell you eventually, I just need the right time… but I made a vow…I gave my word when I thought I could keep it… but the longer I hold onto it… the harder it's going to be for you… you're already too hard on yourself about all this crap anyway…
"Y'know what I don't get?" Sam started.
"Besides…"
"Don't go there…" Sam chastised with easy good humor and Dean grinned with wiggling eyebrows.
"What?" he asked.
"When Laura was in trouble at the Knee… Cernunnos actually used me to contact you, to help her… if something's wrong, if she was hurt or…" he stalled, watching Dean carefully as he swallowed hard but nodded his head.
"Killed Sam… you can say it… I know it's possible."
Sam nodded, "Killed… Why no… notice? interaction? indication…anything?"
Dean shrugged, "Unless it was her time then there would have been nothing for us TO do, no way we could help or be allowed to interfere…but… and understand… I've got no reason to think this… I'm no shining geek-boy like you, but I don't think she's dead…" he shrugged.
Sam nodded and thought about it, he had to agree with Dean, he didn't think she was dead, but then again, they hadn't known John was either until Bobby called them. Some psychic I am…he thought and shook his head. When he next looked there was an expectant expression on his big brother's face, almost like he had a question to ask and for some reason, the idea seemed almost ludicrous to Sam. He raised an eyebrow, as Dean finished his mouthful of boston cream donut, swallowing it down with his coffee.
How many cups have you had already today Dean? What time did you get up and make that first pot? he wondered having seen the filter and grounds in the garbage can not long after he'd woken up, …You said you don't remember them entirely… what DO you remember? What are you hiding from me Dean? Please… help me help you.
"So… I'm curious… what do you want to talk about Alex Bentley about?" Dean asked.
"Oooh…" Sam grunted, he hadn't expected that one.
"Ahh huh…" Dean pulled. Sam's mouth opened and snapped shut a couple of times and just as soon as he took in a deep breath, about to explain his question, Dean held up a finger and stopped him, "Alex took a bullet in the back so it didn't hit me… Marshall Hall was targeted so I could be Healed by Roy, Laya was passed over so Roy could heal me… Those are all certainties Sam…" pausing, he took a breath and looked at his little brother, "… Alex said something to me when she was dying…"
"What'd she say?" Sam asked. He'd wondered a couple of times what she might've said in her last moment but Dean hadn't given him any reason to think it was anything of particular importance.
"She said, 'worth it… give you what's left…,'" he confided but somehow, for some reason kept her last five words to himself, 'You have destiny…You're Gold' she said Sam, and she said it to ME…the golden aura'd people…the ones the demons can't feed on…God the things she saw…I wish Laura was here to help me sort it all out… he sighed to himself. "…then… remember how she said in her journals that she'd give a piece of herself to someone?" he asked.
Sam nodded.
Dean tried to say it, wondered if he should, then nodded to himself, from what he understood, it wasn't something anyone could change, "I think when she touched my face, just before she died… So help me God Sammy if you make a joke about this I'm gonna…"
Sam shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed, "I won't Dean…what?"
Dean sighed, "I think she gave me the last of herself."
"Excuse me?" Sam asked uncertainly, "What like you've got a chunk of some dead chick running around in your head?"
"I don't think it's like that…" Dean started as a knock sounded on the door. He furrowed his eyebrows at Sam and looked out the peephole. He opened the door and looked left and right down the front of the motel but didn't see anyone. He closed the door and turned to Sam who sat watching him curiously, "I thought I heard a knock…"
"Probably next door or something… so dead chick in your head…" Sam pressed as Dean sat back down.
"No it's not like that… not from what I figured from her journals anyway… it's kind of… more of a… certainty…" he struggled then shrugged, It's like that whole concept that nothing is real, nothing is solid, nothing is exactly where we think it is until OUR perception actually fixes its position… that whole Heisenberg uncertainty principle that they've actually managed to prove … aaaarrrrgghhhh! Damn you Laura! Sammy'll think I flipped my NUT if I even try to explain it to him…
"I don't know man… it's like the whole, there's a reason I'm not allowed to be dead yet and you want honesty little brother? I think it's because I made a promise! As long as I'm around nothing bad's gonna happen to you… and I mean to keep that promise…" Liar…Dean castigated himself, cause if destiny is irrefutable and unalterable then I'd be dead… Nothing anyone could have done… not even Laura's 'influence' could have saved me that night IF destiny wasn't malleable, if we didn't create it ourselves… at least in part... He hoped Sam would buy his simplistic explanation. He practically freaked when I used the word antithetical how's he gonna react if I start trying to explain that apparently it's the energy of thought…Damn you Laura… really… I love you honey but the crap you poured into my head… oh God Woman the doors you pushed me through! Dean groaned inwardly but felt the smile on his face. She had exposed him to these theories and concepts, discussing them passionately with him as if he was some kind of college professor or something. While she never pretended to really understand the whole of it, when it came to what she did understand, she never once seemed to think that he might not be able to follow. As a result of that faith in him, Dean had found he rather enjoyed contemplating what parts of quantum physics he could wrap his mind around.
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"Dean… son… you have to come to terms with this… I know you didn't do it intentionally… We ALL know it was an accident… you just loaded the wrong shells…" John said softly while wiping his son's overlong hair out of his eyes and away from his sweaty brow.
Dean had just woken up from another nightmare, the screams that tore out of his throat sent John's blood curdling in his body. This son, this one person was all that was left of his world, and he was falling apart before his eyes.
As long as he lived he'd never forget walking in on his first born son that day. Dean hadn't been answering his cell for days, he hadn't come out of his motel room, hadn't ordered in, hadn't made a phone call, hadn't turned on a light. If it hadn't been for the do not disturb sign on the doorknob, housekeeping might have thought no one had taken the room at all. But John knew his son, he knew Dean had grown up with his little brother as his only genuine possession. Guns came and went, knives shattered, bows needed replacing, rocksalt burned and even cars sometimes were killed, but Sam… Sam was his constant. The puppy he'd always wanted, and unlike most children who begged for a puppy and neglected to feed it or care for it or walk it… Dean had been diligent. He'd raised and trained that puppy of his with infinite patience that spoke of a nature far too evolved for a child of four.
John still wondered occasionally if Dean had really seen what he claimed to have seen, or if the knowledge he'd bestowed on his eldest had pushed him over the edge, and like the urban legend about some sleepy mother who stuffs her crying child into the oven early Thanksgiving morning instead of putting the turkey in there, had he loaded the buckshot shells subconsciously? Had he killed his little brother? His puppy rather than face the task of re-making fate? Had he found it Just Too Much?
John held his sons' head in his hands and pressed his lips to his clammy forehead.
"Dad?" Dean's voice scratched as he came slowly back from whatever hell his mind cast him into on a regular basis.
Oh God the innocence in that voice… the trust… I can hear the child within him, "Yes son?" he shuddered holding his son's head to him.
"It's okay dad…" Dean muttered but wasn't really sure it would be.
John held him away from himself, his eyes and nose running in time, his fingers looping under the straps that bound his son's arms against his body, making certain he could never hurt himself again.
John smiled tightly, his lips trembling even as he drew his arm across his eyes, wiping the tears away.
"It will be son… it will be…" he nodded balling his fingers into a tight fist that struck his oldest boy like a hammer blow, bone at the outer rim of the eye socket folded beneath the force of the blow and John heard the whiplash crackling of his son's neck popping, several vertebrae in succession.
Dean's head whipped halfway over his shoulder and as his body fell backward onto the quilted padding of his room he thought, It's okay dad…it's okay…
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tbc
please R&R,
things pick up a bit in chapter 3… I promise.
Thanks sifi
