Hope you all enjoy this chapter!
Thanks so much to my brilliant beta, ackeberlynn. I couldn't have done this without you!
Reviews can be used as currency. The more you give me, the faster you'll get more chapters.
No, I'm serious.
9 years ago, Dean and I worked a case for a woman named Sarah Blake, or as Dean likes to call her, "the magnificent Mrs. Sam Winchester". Even now, he still thinks I should have ended up with Sarah. Even tried to set us up a couple of times.
She was certainly one of the more interesting clients we've had over the years. I mean, not just because she was a great woman. Not just because I had feelings for her.
It's not everyday that we work with an art dealer who's sold a painting haunted by the ghost of a homicidal kid. That case was a tough one. This adopted girl killed off her entire family, and her spirit was still bound to a painted family portrait.
I just remember the surprise on the work men's faces when Sarah told them to burn the painting, and they realized she was being serious. It was a priceless moment.
I had bonded with Sarah, Dean and I killed a ghost, and I left Sarah behind. That's a story for another time. I can't think about Sarah. Not now.
There was one painting from Sarah's show that stood out to me. Not the one with the psycho kid. There was another one that was some sort of street scene, with people and cars and buildings. I can't remember exactly.
I remember all the other paintings looking like photographs, kind of. They had distinct shapes and you could see different images in them. The painting I'm referring to was weird. All the colors blended to the point that you couldn't see distinct shapes. The buildings flowed into the streets, and people melted into the background. The colors flowed together so much that you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
The corner of the bathroom wall invites some of my blood to leak out of my head and onto the blue wallpaper. The red blurs into the blue blurs into the brown blurs into the off-white.
The deep crimson, an exact match to the leakage from my arms, is blurred. Just like the painting.
My eyes water as I blink, trying to focus. I can feel the blood rushing around in my head, darting from the back to the front, around, and back again. What's not escaping from my scalp is gasping for air, sending blue, red, pounding flashes to the backs of my eyes.
I can't breathe.
Neither can Dean.
I am breathing for him.
I guess that's why there's no air for me.
How long have I been filling my own lungs, emptying them into Dean's?
His pulse barely tickles my fingertips. It has a sense of rhythm that's even worse than mine. Thud...thud thud….thud…..
Thud.
I can't do it anymore. I can't even see.
I sit up in the darkness. My neck is a limp rope that can't hold my head above my chest. I am gasping desperately for air.
The colors of the room are starting to become like the painting again, confused and muddy. The black, speckled swirling returns, pushing the darkness.
My lungs start to feel more like lungs. My neck stiffens, raising my head slightly.
With every breath I draw, I feel strength dripping back into me. I slowly get to my feet, flailing my arms for balance like a child learning to ride a skateboard. My knees wobble violently, but I manage to stay upright.
The world spins beneath me, and the counter top rises up to support my groping fingers. I let my weight fall against its blessed solidness.
I breathe as deeply as I can for a few more minutes, enough to where I know what's going on around me.
The water that I splash from the tap is frigid against my skin, but it jolts me awake a little bit more.
Time to go in again.
I fall to my knees at Dean's head.
And meet his gaze.
My body jerks backwards, my head coming within inches of striking the bathroom wall again.
Dean continues to stare at me, unblinkingly. His chest moves up and down regularly, as if nothing at all had been impeding his breathing moments earlier.
"Dean?" I pull myself forward. The skin on my palms squelches against the wet floor as I crawl towards my brother, my heart pounding against my ribcage. Squelch. Boom. Squelch. Boom.
"Please...not more Latin, Dean. Can you hear me? Dean!"
His gaze follows me as I move closer and closer.
I can see over the top of his chest to the floor on the other side.
And there it is.
The same phrase again, written in Dean's blood on the floor.
Where is he even bleeding that he was able to do that?
His fingernails make a squelching sound. Like my hands on the bathroom floor. His fingernails, coming out of his arm.
Just like when he scratched me. Deeper, maybe.
"Dean!"
I grab his hands, pulling them away from his arms so he can't do more damage to himself.
That's when I catch sight of my own arms for the first time.
They're so bloody that I didn't notice before. The words.
Carved into my skin.
Obscurum est, et in hominibus, et non vives.
Nam homo occideretur.
I crawl backwards, towards the wall and the sink and solidness. Squelch, thud. Squelch, thud.
Dean's eyes never leave mine.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
"Dean, don't…" I croak. My own voice got stuck somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
"Dean…"
Silence. I can't even make myself say his name again, because that man...that thing, lying on mine and Dean's bathroom floor….it's not Dean. It's not my brother.
I pull my knees into my chest and hide my face in my arms.
"Help me." I mouth into my torn skin. My own blood teases my tongue, metallic and brutal.
"Help me."
I would scream, but I know that would only make the panicking worse.
Time passes at some sort of speed...it feels fast and slow at the same time. It's the tortoise and the hare, chasing each other endlessly around the ticking of the second hand on the clock.
I should open my eyes. See if the Dean-thing is okay, or if it's stopped breathing, or if it's closed Dean's eyes.
I can't make myself.