Good Little Soldier- Chapter Twenty Five- Three Days Tops
Hello guys! I'm writing this at my GSA because it's the first meeting and I have no idea what to say to anyone. But it's fun. That's all that's happening in Scarlettville.
seitanspawn: it is pretty short, I'm sorry! I don't have very good chapter stamina and I blame a lifetime of reading books like Maximum Ride and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, where the chapters are less than a page half the time. I'm working on it, though!
babyreaper: true story I had no idea where I was going with this until you suggested that so I owe you my firstborn child thank you so much.
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"What's for dinner?" Sam asks from his seat at the table.
I'm in the living room out of his view trying desperately not to pass out. Bobby's only been gone about twenty minutes but I can't shake the feeling that he's not coming back. Or that he is coming back, but he'll be exactly like every other hunter I know and it'll be dad all over again. God, it hasn't even been an hour yet and I'm already having a panic attack. The next three days are going to be hell.
"Dean?" I hear Sam call. I take a deep breath and walk back into the kitchen.
"Yeah. Dinner," I say. I cross the room and open the fridge, a mixture of relief and surprise flooding through me when I see how full it is. "What d'you want?"
"Food," Sam says.
I turn to him and smile sarcastically.
Eventually I manage to make soup, which isn't impressive but also isn't stale cereal or half a piece of toast, meaning it's still an upgrade from the last time I had to make dinner for the two of us. The second we sit down, though, it hits me again; Bobby isn't sitting across from me. He's off doing the same things Dad did. Suddenly I don't have as much of an appetite.
I don't know why this is bothering me so much; it's just three days. I've done this for nearly three months before. A lot has changed, and maybe not for the better. I've walked out of the woods and into a desert. The walls are still here; I'm beginning to see them. They're more transparent than they used to be, but there they are, all four of them, built up around me like a cut scabbing over. I wait until Sam leaves to get ready for bed to dump my soup down the drain. And then I just stare at the water running out of the faucet, because at this point I will do literally anything to stop myself from thinking, literally anything to keep myself half-awake and half-asleep, because being awake means being alert and being asleep means being defenseless.
"Dean?" Sam's voice yanks me out of my head. "You've been standing there since I left. And it's been ten minutes."
"Oh."
"You look like you're gonna be sick."
I am sick. "I'm fine."
He knits his eyebrows together and nods a little. "I'm going to bed."
"Okay. Goodnight." I feel like someone woke me up while I was sleepwalking. I don't know where I am or how I am or who I am. The wood on the floor is warped next to the sink.
"Dean?"
"Hmm?"
"What are you gonna do?"
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask how you were." He crosses the floor and jumps up onto the counter, sitting cross-legged and leaning his head against a cabinet door. He's wearing one of my old t-shirts. "Bobby told me to make sure you got sleep."
I give him the worst reassuring smile in the world. "I will."
He tugs on my sleeve. "Come on."
"I've still gotta clean up. And check all the doors. And-"
"How am I supposed to make sure you get sleep if I go to sleep before you?"
I sigh and run a hand over my face. He's already got a comeback for every excuse I could throw at him; I can tell. So there's no reason to fight him, except for the fact that last time I actually tried to sleep it took him, and Bobby, and almost the paramedics to calm me down.
"It's just sleeping," Sammy says, his eyes wide. "What's the big deal?"
"I…" am definitely not going to explain that every time I close my eyes I have nightmares about Dad raping me, I finish silently. Instead I just let my hands fall to my sides. "Okay," I say, and I can't decide if this is weak or strong. Because I'm facing something, but I'm sprinting away from a mile-long list of other things.
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Bobby stands at the other end of the hallway. So much color has left his eyes that they look almost grayscale. There's a gun in his hand, and something tells me the bullets aren't silver. I take a step backward. He takes a step forward.
"What's going on?" I stutter out.
The walls grow darker. No, not darker- more opaque. Before I could almost glimpse the rooms behind them, and now the rest of the house is closed off forever. The colors swirl on the walls, adding layer upon layer of wallpaper.
"What do you think?" Bobby replies, every word clipped short. "Don't kid yourself, Dean. You really thought I wouldn't realize? I wouldn't open my eyes?" He starts walking toward me, and I can't move. I can't even blink. "All those promises I made. They weren't worth it. You aren't worth it. In fact…" he laughs a little "... you're not really worth anything, are you?"
"What?" It's all I can say.
He pushes me into another room. It's a kitchen, but not the one at his house. I stare at the cabinets, and the artwork hanging above the sink, and suddenly I remember that it's Mom's kitchen. The one in Kansas; the one that burnt down. Everything looks like it's never been touched. Brand-new in a way that it shouldn't be. And it's so quiet. There isn't even a hum of electricity in the background. Just… silence. I slowly back up, towards the door, but when I turn around it isn't there. Just blue wallpaper, with more layers crawling down from the ceiling like water damage. A dripping noise pierces the silence, ear-splitting after all the quiet. I turn and watch as three red raindrops hit the tile floor, like the first steps on the surface of an untouched field of snow. They're too red. They fall too fast. I follow their path up and stare at the ceiling. I can't move again. I can't blink again.
It's Sammy.
It's my brother, he's up there, he's on the ceiling.
And now he's on fire. The fire is everywhere, it's on the walls, it's on the cabinets, it's in my eyes, it's in my lungs, but I can't breathe or blink or move. The fire is everywhere on Sam, it's folding in on him and he's folding in on himself and everything is folding like playing cards in the fire. Cardboard. Ink. Paper. Plastic. That's all we are.
There's so much fire…
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I shove my face into a pillow and try to muffle the scream I can feel pushing up my throat. Sam's still sound asleep across the room from me, but I still stand up on shaky legs, crossing the room to double check that he's really okay. That's all the energy I actually have. I jump back into my bed when I'm halfway back and curl into the fetal position, arms wrapping around my knees. My stomach hurts like hell.
The clock by my bed hits the four am mark. Electricity buzzes through the house. Stars start to fade and disappear as the sky turns all kinds of colors, muted by the morning fog. I don't move. I can't move, I can't even blink.
This is going to be the longest three days of my life.
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I try and get out of bed the next morning. I really do. But my stomach feels like it's on fire and my head is glued to the pillow. There's not much I can do but watch Sam get up and get ready for school. My dream from last night is still so fresh I can almost feel the heat of the fire in the kitchen, almost see the flames snaking up the walls of the bedroom. I groan and bury my head under my pillow.
"I made scrambled eggs," Sam says, sitting on the edge of my bed. He bounces a little. "You want to come have some?"
"I will later," I mumble from under the pillow.
"I'll be at school later."
"I'm really tired, Sammy." It's not a lie, not really. I'm awake, sure, and I'd sell my soul for a few more hours of sleep, but I'm sure as hell not going back to sleep.
"You slept all night. Come on; I'm gonna be late for school."
I don't say anything. Sam makes an exhasperated noise and stands up, grabbing his jacket off the floor. "I'm gonna go to the bus. Jerk."
"Bitch."
He leaves. I try not to fall back asleep. Eventually I have enough energy to get up and stumble down the stairs. The eggs are cold by now, so I throw them out and walk into the bathroom to raid the cabinets for pain meds. Bobby has an arsenal of them. I find some bottles of pills that aren't expired and I'm about to walk out when something catches my eye.
A razor. A couple of them, actually.
My fingers twitch. Really? a voice inside me deadpans. He's been gone for a day, and you're already back to square one. No wonder everyone thinks you're pathetic. You sure haven't done much to prove them wrong.
Shut up. I'm walking out, see?
No, you're not. What's Bobby going to be like when he comes back? Even if nothing's changed, what's Bobby going to be like in a month? A year?
I said shut up. I'm walking out.
The phone rings, pulling me out of my thoughts. Usually, the phones are constantly ringing in the kitchen, but Bobby must have sent out a warning and none of them have rung since about two hours after he left. This is the phone from the hallway; only five people actually have than number. And only four of them can actually call it- I heard that Dad's not allowed to call the house. That doesn't stop me from being more than a little scared as I pick up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Dean." It's Bobby. I breathe a sigh of relief.
"Hey. How's the hunt going?"
"It was going fine until Rufus screwed up the entire job last night."
"You could've warned me!" I hear Rufus shout in the background.
"And you could've told me you'd never shot a gun in your life," Bobby fires back. "Is Sam at school?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I left you boys enough food, right?"
I laugh. "You're kidding, right? Of course you did."
"Okay. And what about you? You holding up?"
"Yeah, I'm-" I glance back toward the bathroom door "-I'm fine. Just tired."
"Alright. Listen, I've got some people to interview. I'll be home by Friday. Of course, we might be here longer if Rufus doesn't learn how to manage a goddamn gun…"
"I swear, Singer…" Rufus says loudly.
I can't help but smile. "Friday. Okay."
"I'll call you tomorrow, Dean."
The line goes dead. I stand there holding the phone for another five minutes before I actually put it back on the wall. Then I walk towards the kitchen; it's twelve-thirty and I haven't eaten anything in at least twenty-four hours.
I close the bathroom door on the way.
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Sam gets home about three hours later and immediately walks toward the fridge, mumbling hi to me. I'm sitting on the couch, staring at a book but not reading it. Looking at words helps distract me from the fact that I'm sitting in Bobby's house, alone, waiting for him to come back and start beating me up every night like Dad did.
"How was school?" I ask. Sam comes in and sits next to me, holding a box of cereal in one hand and a math book and pencil in the other.
"It was fine. I guess you finally got out of bed."
"Yeah." Yeah, and it was the worst decision that I've made today.
"When are you gonna go back to school?"
I freeze. No one's brought up me and school in the same sentence since eight months ago. I'd always kind of assumed it was everyone's idea that I wasn't going back. It seems like too normal of a thing for me to do. I don't do normal things, like waking up early and having homework and not being on the edge of a mental breakdown almost all of the time. Plus, the thought that I might have to explain myself to teachers or change for gym in front of other people, that's terrifying. I just shrug at Sam and open my book again.
"Haven't Bobby and you talked about it before?"
"No."
"Oh."
Sammy goes back to his homework and we stop talking. Everything about talking to him is awkward now. He knows more than he used to, and I'm not technically in charge anymore, and it feels everything is out of place since we moved in with Bobby. Everything is out of place.
I make us mac and cheese for dinner. Maybe someday I'll be able to cook more than three things, but the odds aren't looking good. He launches into a long-winded story about school, and I listen, because it's better than talking. Then we go to bed. Well, Sam goes to bed, and I pretend to until he's asleep. I spend most of the night outside. It's louder outside, with the highway so close and the wind walking through the trees, and I don't really do silence anymore, so this is better. It's bigger, too, and I can't really do small anymore. I can't do a lot of things anymore. It makes me wonder why I could ever do them.
PTSD, they said. Post-traumatic stress. I don't feel traumatized. Just kind of tired and kind of jittery and kind of like jumping off a bridge. I go and sit on the roof of one of the cars in Bobby's lot. It's tempting; I know where the keys are, and it would almost be too damn easy to drive until I find a bridge or overpass high enough. But I know I'm not going to.
I lean back and sigh. There's not a lot of options for me. I'm starting to see that even though dead is definitely one of them, it might not be the best one. For the first time in months, I glance up and wonder if there's anyone glancing down. There probably isn't. If there was, they would've done something a long time ago. But it's still a nice thought. Angels. Mom. If I don't start letting myself have some hope again I'm not going to get anywhere.
Suddenly I hear someone yelling inside the house. Sam. You left him alone? I hear Dad shouting at me. I'm upstairs in our room with a gun before he can finish his sentence.
"Hey," I say breathlessly, my hands shaking around the shotgun I grabbed from… somewhere.
Sam's sitting in bed, fists bunched around the covers and his hair plastered to his forehead. I look around for a few minutes before I realize there's no one and nothing here. Just Sammy. I drop the gun.
"I had a bad dream," he says quietly, eyes wide and almost glowing in the darkness.
"It's okay." I sit on the bed and pull him into a hug. "It's fine. It was just a dream."
"You're freezing."
"Yeah, well, it's cold outside."
"You were outside?" he mumbles into my shoulder.
"I couldn't sleep. But I'm here now, okay? It'll be fine."
I stay there until he falls back asleep, running my hand through his hair. It only takes him a few minutes. He's got a gift when it comes to falling asleep, one I wish he could teach me. I think about going outside again, but instead I end up lying down next to him and closing my eyes. Maybe I'll actually get some sleep.
I don't have a lot of options. But as I drift off, I realize one thing; dead is definitely not one of them.
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Just a heads-up, I'm keeping to my plan to finish this fic by Halloween. But if you want a sequel-type thing, which I have an idea for, tell me. And if you don't want it, I'll probably still write it anyway, because PTSDean is my favorite thing to write.