Warning: implied beating. Dissociation/derealization.


Chapter Seven

May 2005

It's May third and you wake up with lingering images of a gun in a thin hand pointing at your father in your dreams. Tomorrow will mark the day you put your father's body into the pyres. Pale face and a bullet-hole in his forehead, you still remember. Sam (you can think of him with his name now, without him melding into the Sammy with the big-dimples and the small, soft hand inside your hand in your mind. Three years is enough time to learn, to get used to it, to make him a person but not the same person you once felt oceans of love for) stood there and he stared without blinking and you didn't know that he was the monster who did it because he was Sammy, because he was the one who called you on the phone and whispered, lost and confused and like he didn't know what had happened at all, "Dad's dead," and didn't speak a word after this for the next three months.

Your life is still mostly the same as it was three years before, the same old tedious thing, dreary and depressing and you can't differentiate yesterday from the day before and the day before and the day before because it's all the same. The deadening years go by unchanged. You keep waiting for him to give up, to leave, say that he can't do this and that he never should have come in the first place, and he doesn't. It's become a kind of game at some point, to see if he breaks first and walks out the door, wondering if it'll be this day or the next week or the next month. He's still here three years later.

It's May third and today's the day you got that call from him and you did not know at the time that it will end three months later in 'it's true'. The people around you go on as if today means nothing, because they didn't lose their only blood parent on this day, and maybe there are some people here who feel the same sense of significance though for different reasons. But there is something outrageously unjust and maddening about the fact that nobody knows that the man who's saved so many of their lives and their loved ones' lives, state-to-state and monster-to-monster, from being potentially taken is dead.

It's May third again ten years later since that day and everything hits you as hard as it did the first time, but now with a sense of familiarity. You've already gone through this too many times before, and maybe you will go through this again and again and again for the rest of your life. They say that time heals all wounds, but you don't feel it because today everything comes back to stab you in the chest and burn you inside your ruptured veins and make you sick and heavy and trapped. And maybe you won't feel it as long as he's there. Sam. As long as Sam's there.

You don't know how to make him leave. And all you want to do is scream the most horrible things you could think of at him and hit him until your hands are broken and bloody and wound him the worst way you can until he's broken and bloody too and you know that none of it will matter because you just know, and it makes you sicker and angrier and heavier and even more trapped, but you know that none of that will make him leave.

These urges come out in short bursts at every single thing he does today. He brings you coffee and you hurl it at the wall. You bang on the door when he's taking a shower even though it's only been five minutes. He sleeps in the car because he stayed awake the whole night to stare at the ceiling and you snap at him to wake up because the pathetic noises he's making is grating on your nerves. He talks too quietly when he tells you about the case of the day and it pisses you off.

"Speak like you want to be heard or shut the fuck up," you hiss at him spitefully.

He somehow seems to grow smaller and thinner and quieter every year, like he's slowly dissipating into nothing. You wonder how many years it would take for that to happen. You just want him to disappear.

He clenches his jaw and speaks louder. "It's a manticore. That's what it sounds like anyway from Dad's journal…"

It bristles against something raw inside of you, hearing that word in his voice. The snarl comes out before you can even think about stopping it. "Don't you dare fucking call him that. Not on the day you took his life."

He's not afraid of you. You know this already. He has looked at you and spoken to you with a lot of emotions, but fear has never been one of them. He tries to be invisible because that's what he believes he owes to you. You knew this, knew that he'd snap but this is good because then he could give you a reason to fight him. It's hard to have it when he's barely ever louder than a whisper. You're full of fire and grief and you want to pour it all out onto the person who put it there.

He grinds his teeth together and flings the journal down, jerking up from his seat, "You know what, I've taken enough of your shit! What the fuck do you want me to do about it now, huh? Yes, I killed him. I fucking killed him. And I'm sorry-"

"'Cause that'll cut it," you sneer.

"No. No, it won't. And taking your hate out on me is not gonna make you feel better either. And it sure as well won't do him any good because he's in fucking Hell!"

There's the reason you've been waiting for.

You don't know when you let go, and you don't know when you come back to yourself. You don't know how everything in-between had happened, when it had stopped being a fight on equal standing, when you were the one over him with your fists in his shirt and he was on the ground with blood in his mouth, face hidden behind his arms. But it's like you've just woken up from being knocked out and now you're staring at a body curled up tightly against the wall, cowering protectively and heaving and shaking. You can't see his face, but you can see your hands, and there's blood and bruised skin and you feel like you're looking through water, and nothing seems real and you feel like you've just been watching your life happen to someone else. The lights are too bright and the world is too dim and sharp and you feel sick from the smell of blood and violence. You're staring down at your hands, dazed and confused. You don't feel like yourself.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—" he's whimpering, pleading.

You grab your jacket and keys on the way out. You get in the car and drive nowhere and wish that you'd get so lost that even you can't find yourself.

...

You throw up on the side of the road four kilometers in and when the blood on your blazing knuckles starts feeling too heavy on your skin, you grab a cloth and scrub so hard that you just end up tearing off skin, your blood mingling with his (your bone slamming against his bone. You throw up again. You wanted to hurt him, but it was supposed to be with words, not fists, not like this). You lean against the side of the car, hands shaking between your knees, head bowed as you breathe through another bout of sickness, and you want to scream and you can't pinpoint on why anymore because there's too many things to want to scream about.

You call Bobby, and he picks up on the fifth ring. "Dean? Everythin' alright?"

You open your mouth, try to say something, try to find the words that keep running away from you and leaving you blank. You feel confused and lost, stuck in the middle of an endless desert, sky and sand all around you and you don't know which way to go from here and you're not sure if whichever way you choose will be the one that finally gets you out. You feel like some things inside of you had gone loose and then got fixed together the wrong way over time after years and years of losing yourself under the bottom of a car, on hunts, the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and maybe you've finally lost yourself for good now. "I…" You inhale shakily, your eyes hot with tears and your throat aching and your nose twinging as the cold air mixes with grief. "I don't… I don't feel right, Bobby. I don't know how to…b-but it's like I'm not-not all there, you know? Not just today, but, it's been like this a lot for a long time. But today… god, I don't know how it even happened. It's not like I meant to but he made me so mad with the things he said and then-and then-I don't know what to do-fuck, I'm so fucking angry and sad and I don't know how to get it all out of me-" You realize that you're blabbering incoherently and you sound stupid as fuck and it probably doesn't even make sense to Bobby because none of it even makes sense to you but you just- you just want someone to understand even though you don't even know what it is that you want them to understand.

"Dean, calm down," Bobby says, cutting off your broken, shaky rambling. "Just take a deep breath and tell me what it is."

And you take a deep breath and you do. And you think that he's going to be pissed as fuck, but he just stays silent for a long time before he breathes a sad and weary sigh and you wish you hadn't called him because you've never wanted to hear him sound like this again. You don't know what he'll say. Maybe he'll tell you to bring Sam to him, keep him away from you (you hope he will, but you also hope he won't because if he does then you know you won't be able to say no).

He says, "I know yer hurting a lot. Especially on this day. It's gonna be okay. You'll get through this, like ye always do."

And he says, "Why don't you two come over at my house? You've been stuck with each other in small spaces too damn long."

And he says, "I know you didn't realize you were doin' it, son, but… if you do that again, you ain't ever comin' back here."

You wish he'd understand, even if you don't deserve any understanding. You say your byes and the call ends. When it does, there's a shard of white headlights cutting at your eyes. You look up, squinting into it, and there's a large truck swerving unsteadily towards you.

...

You're at the door, your hands reaching out for the knob. You're wondering whether he's still there or whether he's finally gone. You hope it's the latter, because you don't know how to stand him anymore, especially not on a day like this. There's an awareness in the back of your mind that the day hasn't ended yet, and the significance of it won't for another week or two, and your stomach throbs with sorrow and nausea up to your throat. You push against the door and watch the space peeking inside the room widen, your mind bouncing between the image of an empty room or an image of him on the bed every second.

And, as you've thought, even after everything, he's still there.

He looks up at you and catches your eye, quickly looks away half a second later. He has the first aid kit in front of him and you notice that his hands are shaking slightly even though he tries to seem composed and his gaze is rooted to them a little too firmly, and you wish he'd leave so you wouldn't have to deal with this (wouldn't have to face this and the stones piling up in your chest for someone who ruined you so thoroughly).

"We're gonna have to steal a car tomorrow and go to Bobby's for a while," you tell him, empty face, empty voice, even as your loose fists ripple with pain and phantasmal collisions from memories you don't remember. You clench your hands tightly. "Drunk driver rammed into the Impala. Bobby's coming to tow it since he's not that far from here."

"Are you okay?" he asks quietly, his gaze roving over you, sees no blood or injury except for the blood on your elbows and knees. You got out of the way just barely, but you did. The driver, fucking stupid as he was, didn't really deserve to die, so you had to call 911 for him.

You don't answer him (you wish he never asked you that).You crawl into your bed, too tired to clean up your wounds (it's been a long, long day and you just want to stop existing, just want complete oblivion), your head burrowing into the thick pillow where all the cotton inside is mashed and sticking together and splitting apart unevenly on both sides. The next thing you know, you're standing in a room with your knuckles red and torn-skinned and there's a gun in it and it's aimed at your father's head. Blood on walls and splattered on your father's bullet-holed forehead, caked into his dark hair and under your nails. When you speak, it's in Sam's voice, confused and lost, "Sammy killed your daddy." And then everything bursts alight with flames, spreading all over as everything is devoured by the orange radiance, smoke itching at your throat and filling up your lungs until there's no air left.

You snap back into the living world coughing, with a scream pushing up your throat and held back inside your tongue. You feel Sam's eyes boring into you, but he doesn't say anything, and you don't fall asleep again after. The rest of the night is spent like this, both of you silent and inside your own heads.


Author's Note: Thank you

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PutMoneyinThyPurse (chapter 5)

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For your lovely feedback. I truly appreciate them and they never, never fail to make my day, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you to all those tagged the story, everyone who gave it a chance, those who are silently reading. Thank you to everyone for their patience and support.

To all those who are worried about this being an abusive Dean/Dean-negative story: please understand that it is not. I adore Dean with all of my heart, and hence I wrote of his terrible remorse in the aftermath because he's a good person. The explosive reaction was only meant to be realistic, not to paint him in a negative light, and though his extreme actions may not be justifiable, he was bound to lash out in such a way after his overwhelming trauma and adversary, especially after having bottled it up for so long. I can't imagine a person being wholly stable in Dean's position.

I am trying to keep them neutral, trying not to make one seem like the bad guy and the other the good guy. There are no sides to me because they are both in a horrible and complicated situation.