Chapter 55: Time Bomb
A/N: A few notes. One, this was originally supposed to be my attempt at a songfic chapter, but it just didn't work out. Two, this beginning dream is NOT vision. It is a dream that might be having some input from Sam's psychic side. It was supposed to have more, but I'm thinking of separating that and making it into a totally different oneshot. I think that's it.
The car ride was awkward from the first moment they climbed into the rusty old car. Sam missed the Impala now more than ever. He knew that if anything could make him feel better right then, that was it.
He found himself drifting off to sleep involuntarily, and no matter how hard he tried to stop it, he was soon out of it completely. He was greeted with a strange darkness that filled the void where his usual nightmares would be. He could no longer feel the pounding in his head or the pains in his chest when he drew a breath, and for the fiftieth time that day he wondered if he was dying. If he was, there was no time to be scared about it. He merely felt exhausted, and his mind drifted.
But not for long. He woke up soon, very soon, and so abruptly it felt like he had been physically jerked into another existence. He was somewhere he didn't recognize at all, and he was in a bed. He supposed it was mildly comfortable, but something smelled dank and musty, but familiar and comforting in an odd way. It felt distant, and he couldn't quite place why he felt so attached to the feel of this room, and why it made him feel like a different person. Maybe he had just become used to all of those seedy hotels.
Though all he wanted to do was return to sleep, something in the back of his head kept whispering, "Get up" insistently. He obeyed without thought. His feet hit the ground with almost no sound and he looked around. There were no windows, but somehow that didn't occur to him as strange. He welcomed the change. There was a door on the other side of the room, and he could hear whispers from the other side of it. They were saying his name, calling to him. He recognized them: Jess, his mother, his father. He reached for the door handle.
"Don't do it, Sam," an echoing voice from behind him said, and he turned, surprised. There was Dean, staring at him from the other side of the room. He had a warning look on his face, but he was also scared. Not for himself, for Sam. "Don't go." He shot a glance at the door, and Sam realized the voices had stopped.
He walked forward, though he didn't really think about it. It was almost like a reflex. Sam took a single step toward his brother, and Dean smiled encouragingly.
"You don't want to do that," another voice said, more commanding than Dean's. His head turned automatically, searching around the room for a second, only to see nothing. It was then that he realized the voice was inside his own head.
He turned back to Dean, but now there was something else on Dean's face: fear. He was darting anxious glances around the room, as if he had also heard the voice himself. Then his eyes rested on Sam's face, and he shook his head, taking a step back as Sam advanced, and he no longer had control over his body.
"How could you?" Dean breathed. The words came to him as a whisper that Sam was surprised carried across the room. He could barely even hear it and had to lip-read most of it.
"I don't understand," he tried to say, but the words wouldn't form on his lips. He tried to convey the words through his eyes, but that only seemed to make it worse. Dean shook his head once more, disappointment now shining in his eyes.
"This is your destiny, Sam," the voice in his head whispered to him. "Don't bother to fight it. This is who you were meant to be."
"What am I?" Sam thought, and his own body gave him the answer. It moved against his will, the eyes going to the mirror behind his brother. There he saw himself, exactly as he was when he had first joined the demon, pitch-black, merciless eyes and all. His reflection smiled, and it was only then that he noticed the smug smiled creeping on his lips.
"Let me help you," the voice said, only now it was coming from his own mouth.
Sam jerked up out of his seat in shock, his breathing heavy, his heart beating wildly. He should have known better than to think he could go another night without a nightmare. At least this one wasn't as bad as the others had been. Those had been so bad they had been classified as night-terrors.
"Are you alright?" Dean asked, keeping his eyes on the road. Though he hadn't been awake for most of them, he was familiar with Sam's sleeping problem. Sam nodded his head, and Dean mirrored the gesture.
The entire next half hour, Dean seemed to have made a personal vow to himself not to say anything. He kept his eyes focused on the road intently, like he was watching for any sign of movement on the road, even though they hadn't seen a single car the entire trip, nor had the road changed from the precise straight line that was annoying the hell out of Sam. The fact that neither of them had to concentrate on the road, yet they weren't talking, made it even more uncomfortable.
"Is it cold in here?" Sam asked after forty-five minutes had passed, and the Metallica on the classic rock station Dean was listening to had faded out and the DJs had started talking about some upcoming movie that they apparently hated. He was shivering, though sweating at the same time. Dean didn't even look over for more than a second.
"Um..." he started, clearing his throat as he prepared to use his voice again. He furrowed his brow. "Yeah, it is."
It wasn't the truth. Though it was winter and most likely freezing outside, the heat was on high. Dean just preferred to lie to him, and Sam couldn't blame the guy. He'd just be admitting another symptom of the poison was creeping up even faster on his dying brother, and he didn't want to worry him.
Sam nodded, pretending he had believed Dean. As if to prove the lie, Dean turned up the heat even more, though he was bound to be already really warm in the cramped vehicle.
"There's, um..." Dean started. "There's an extra blanket in the back. I bought it awhile ago, and I never use it, but I keep it just in case." He jerked his head in the direction.
Knowing it wouldn't do any good and would only make him look stupider and more pathetic than he already did, he still reached back to placate Dean, knowing he would just get worried if he didn't. The blanket was small and scratchy, but it did help a little, he guessed.
"Here," Dean said, turning a little and holding a hand out. He was reaching over to Sam's forehead. "Let me see how your temperature is doing."
Sam already knew how it was doing: shitty. Dean knew it, too. A second before his hand touched Sam's forehead, he paused. He could feel the heat radiating off of it from there. He tried to swallow inconspicuously, though he had known the answer before even checking. He was just trying to make busy work.
Dean brushed the bangs off of Sam's forehead, where they were wet and sticking there from the sweat. His hand felt abnormally cold there, like he had stuck it out in an ice-drift, though Sam had heard once that you would feel that in comparison to the temperature of your body. Dean's hands were probably normal.
"You feel fine," Dean said with a fake smile, and it was then that Sam realized why he had done it. He had wanted to give Sam the impression it wasn't as bad as it was. He had wanted to give him some bit of hope for his survival.
"Really?" Sam said, playing along. If Dean wanted to think it would work, he wasn't going to burst his bubble.
"Yeah," Dean said. "You've got awhile left. Plenty of time." He turned back to the road, smiling one more time to reassure Sam, but his hands were gripping the wheel tightly, as if to steady them. "God, I hate this station," he muttered. "All the DJs do is talk, talk, talk all day long. The other day they were discussing whether or not 'spaz' should be counted as a curse word." Dean rolled his eyes, and Sam nodded his head absently. Dean could tell his attempt at a distraction wasn't working, but he looked on curiously as Sam reached back for his bag.
"I'd give you all of them, but I stored most of them in the car, and since Nora stole it I didn't have many left, but..." Sam murmured as he rifled through all of the junk until he got to the very bottom of his bag. There, he unzipped a small pouch on the side and pulled something out. Four small, rectangular objects. "I still kept a few with me, just in case." He smirked slightly before handing them to Dean, who took one last glance at the road before diverting his attention to the print. A grin spread across his face when he did.
"Metallica," he listed for the first one, and then sorted through the stack, "AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, and Foreigner." He glanced up at Sam, smirking. "I thought you were never going to give these back to me."
"Well, yeah, I wasn't," Sam said, and chuckled, but that led into a fit of coughs which he immediately brushed off. "I figured now was as good a time as ever. I just can't believe you didn't find them before."
"You know, Fergie really started to grow on me after awhile," Dean joked. "But seriously, why now?"
"Is it really that criminal of me to want to give you reason not to bitch about the stupid DJs for the next few hours? Please, I'd do anything to make this less awkward for us."
"Is it really that awkward?" Sam snorted, and then put a hand over his face, shaking his head, trying to hold back the nervous chuckles. "Come on, man."
"Dude, you haven't said anything for the entire time. You just sit there like a robot, and then, all of a sudden you're all 'Let me take your temperature. Let me see just how close to dying you are, how much longer you'll last before you drop dead.'"
"Nobody said anything about you dropping dead," Dean threw back.
"It's still pretty awkward." Dean paused for a moment before answering.
"Yeah, that's pretty bad," Dean agreed. "But not as bad as you suddenly trying to make everything right between us."
"What makes you think that's what this is?" Sam asked defensively. He crossed his arms in front of him, which only succeeded in making him look like a stubborn toddler.
"I know," Dean responded simply.
"Well, don't act like you don't understand why I'm doing it."
"No, I don't," Dean said, attempting to sound oblivious, which, of course, was bullshit. "I don't get why you feel this need to make everything up to me all of a sudden, like you couldn't do it before."
"Whoa, what's with the hostility all of a sudden?" Sam said. "What's wrong with wanting to make everything right?"
"Because it isn't how you do it. You don't just decide all of a sudden that everything's going to be fixed."
Five Years Ago
You can do this, Dean told himself for the hundredth time that day. He had been saying that for over an hour, sitting in front of the phone, but he hadn't worked up the courage yet. He kept telling himself he didn't have anything to worry about, that he was being the good guy in this situation. Sam wanted him to call, and that was exactly what he was doing. He still hadn't convinced himself, though, that he needed to call. As far as his logic went, he had nothing to apologize for.
No, that wasn't fair to think. That wasn't right. What he had said was wrong, the worst thing he could have said. He was the reason Sam had left. Sam had offered to stay, and he had told him to go. Why had he done that? Wasn't that what he had been waiting the entire argument to hear? He had finally worn down Sam, gotten him to give up his dream for his family, and he couldn't stop himself. It had been too late.
Dean nearly cringed at the memory, but stopped it, trying to force it down like he had every other time it came up that week. But for some reason, right then it wouldn't cooperate.
John had been strangely calm about the matter, aside from asking Dean what had happened every five seconds. John had his suspicions, had known what had happened was Dean's fault, but hadn't voiced those concerns, and for that Dean was grateful. Even then, Dean knew he wouldn't have listened if he had.
Dean didn't care anymore. About what Sam thought of him, what his dad thought of him, anybody. He didn't know why he should bother anymore. The harder he tried, the worse he fucked things up. What he had said to Sam just proved that.
He had to fix something, and fast, because Sam was so stubborn he would never even try. Dean picked up the phone and dialed.
He guessed he was in a state of disbelief or something. The house still felt strangely empty without his younger brother, and he didn't know he would miss him this much. Sam had been a pain in the ass since they were kids, but it had never mattered before until then. Until he had told Sam he didn't care anymore.
When Sam had told him to say it, his first instinct was to say "Of course I want you around," but that wasn't what came out. His mind was telling him to say it, but his mouth was moving on its own, like it thought it knew the truth better than Dean did.
Maybe that was why it had come out. Maybe it was the truth and he just hadn't known it. Maybe he didn't care about Sam as much as he wanted to believe.
No, that wasn't it, and Dean knew it. He would have loved to hate Sam, to have not missed him, to have really meant what he had said. He wished he could be like his father; then he wouldn't care what Sam's face looked like, how hurt he had looked. Sam hadn't even been mad like Dean would have expected.
Sam surprised him that night. Even after saying it, Dean hadn't seen what he had done. He would have thought Sam would call his bluff and argue some more, but he had accepted it. He thought Dean had meant it. His face had transformed after Dean had uttered the words; Dean could see that when he had finally turned around. He only saw his brother for a moment, a split second, barely an image. His last of Sam. But his brother had changed towards him.
"Hello," a voice said on the other end of the phone, and Dean felt his throat contract, struggling to find the right words in the situation. He couldn't outright say he was sorry; he would sound weird and desperate.
"Hey, it's Dean--" he started, but was cut off.
"This is Sam Winchester," the voice continued without interruption, and it was then that Dean felt his heart begin to sink, though he stopped it immediately. He had to stop that. No more hurting over this. He was a new person from now on. He would leave the message, and then it was a new Dean. He wasn't going to let this happen again, ever. He would put up a barrier; nobody was getting through again if he could help it. "Please leave a message after the beep and I'll call you back when I get this."
That little sentiment turned out to be total and complete bullshit. The call had never been answered, and when he had called back, the same message had played.
It was like a promise from Sam, and unspoken statement.
Things are never going to be the same, he seemed to be silently implying. And they never were.
The next day, when he had called, the number had been disconnected. Dean hadn't been able to get a number after that. John would go and check on his youngest son routinely almost every month to make sure he was alright, and that was the only time he ever mentioned Sam in front of Dean. Once he had asked if Dean wanted to come along, and Dean had said no. Sam didn't want to see him, and though John assured he didn't have to talk to him, Dean still declined, even though he had wanted to. He didn't think he could handle another argument like that, not for awhile.
He never saw Sam for four more years.
Now
"I'm sorry," Sam said quietly, already regretting opening his mouth in the first place. Dean took one look at his sulky expression and sucked a breath in. "I just don't get this sudden..."
"Hostility? Yeah, you said that." Sam bit his lip, and Dean immediately felt guilty.
"It's not your fault," he said, shaking his head. "I just...Sorry about that." He popped the Metallica tape out of its case and into the player. "Thanks for giving them back." Sam didn't answer. Dean dropped his head down, a hand going up in defeat. "Look, really, I'm fine. I'm just getting a little... we should have tried to fix this a long time ago."
"Fix what?" Sam asked without any real feeling.
"Everything." Sam kept his gaze firmly planted on his shoes. Not only did it help him feel less uncomfortable, but it stopped the spinning in his head. "We never really tried to do anything about it, and I guess now it just feels like there's pressure or something to suddenly be a happy family, because we're just not sure how much longer we're going to stay that way."
"We're never going to be a happy family," Sam said under his breath.
"We never really tried," Dean said for the second time, and Sam dropped his head a little more. "We just didn't talk about it. And I know that was my fault, but it wasn't just my fault."
"I know," Sam replied, taking deep breaths, his face getting a little whiter. It had been doing that all morning, getting steadily worse. Sam had learned to just ride out the waves of pain, dizziness, and nausea it brought him, and now he wasn't going to bring it up. He wanted to finish his freaking conversation without collapsing. Only his body didn't seem to think that way. It was telling him to just go to sleep, and then everything would be fine. Only it wouldn't. If he so much as closed his eyes, it was over for him. He was done, and he knew it. His body and mind was still reeling from the last time, and he had a feeling that one had been a close call, too. In fact, the nightmare might have saved his life. It could have been the thing to keep him from slipping away.
"Are you okay?" Dean asked, but Sam ignored him.
"I'm sorry I acted like an asshole that night to you, to dad. I didn't mean to do that. I wanted you to be happy for me." This time it was Dean's turn to be silent for awhile.
"You didn't even talk to me for four years," he said. "I had nothing. You just walked out and then it was like you never existed. Dad even stopped talking about you to me after awhile, because he knew how much I hated it."
"You hated me."
"I didn't hate you," Dean said, but the way he emphasized 'hate' was suspicious. "I was just really frustrated at you. Your number was disconnected, Sam, and I know it wasn't a coincidence. I tried to hunt your number down to wish you a happy birthday and I couldn't find it. Your roomate told me you didn't want to talk to me." Sam's eyebrows met in the center. "I'm guessing he never told you about that?" Dean asked sarcastically. Even Sam could tell how angry he was. He even had lied to his father about it. "You wanted so hard to believe I really didn't care. You wanted an excuse to leave, and I was that. So you pretended like I never tried to apologize. You outright lied to me, telling me you never got those calls. You didn't want to come back." Sam bit his lip so hard he was sure he was going to draw blood. "I wasn't going to beg you to come back, Sam. I just wanted to know my little brother didn't hate me. I just wanted to talk to you. A fucking phone call once a month would have been nice." He shook his head.
"And when you came back, I tried to make it right. I tried for an entire year, but what did I get? I got shot with rock salt, another lecture, and my own brother trying to shoot me between the eyes. I tried for a year, and you never listened. And I really did hate you for awhile, but at least I tried. What can you say you did, other than treat me like I didn't even deserve to look you in the eye? And now, here you are, suddenly all saintly and all 'I want to make things right.' What am I supposed to say, Sammy?"
"I was keeping my promise to you," Sam replied. "I told you that if you wanted me to go, I would go. You wanted--"
"I didn't want you to go," Dean said, and he finally looked at Sam, willing his brother to return the glance. Sam snorted.
"You said outright that you didn't give a shit about me, what I did, or what happened to me," he said.
"Of course I care, Sam!" Dean said loudly. "I can't help it. I'm your brother, and I'm always going to have you around, whether I like it or not. And sometimes you're a royal pain in the ass, but mostly..." Sam sat in shock. This was a rare moment for Dean, and Sam tried as best he could to commit it to memory before Dean realized what he was doing and got pissed at him. So he changed the subject.
"Then why'd you say it?"
Dean looked lost. He shook his head, shrugging his shoulders, a desperate look on his face. "I don't know," he finally answered, and Sam could see that he meant it.
"I'm not saying what you said wasn't true, about me and stuff, but you told me to go. You told me you didn't care, and you told me to go. I went."
"You listened," Dean said quietly. Sam didn't understand. "You listened to me, even though you knew it wasn't true. You still left."
"You meant it."
"No, I didn't," Dean said, and he met Sam's eyes. "I don't hate you, Sam," he continued. He didn't break the gaze except for an occasional glance at the road. "And I know I said those things, and I will regret them for the rest of my life. They took four years with you away from me. And I may hate a lot about you. Hell, I probably hate everything about you right down to your nerdy little haircut, but I'm going to be here. And I want you to know that I'm not here just because I feel like I owe you something, or because I feel like I have to. I'm here with you because I want to be. I'm here because you're my baby brother and I promised mom and dad that I would love you no matter what. And I'm going to keep my freaking promise." Sam smiled slightly, and though Dean looked more than embarrassed, he seemed to be getting over it.
"So," Dean said, "that was my chick-flick moment of the decade. You are not going to see that performance again for awhile So count that as my attempt at making things right."
For once, one of Dean's smartass comments actually made him laugh. That seemed to make Dean happy for the moment.
"So..." Sam said. "Do you want to never mention that again...ever?"
Dean smiled in relief, nodding vigorously. "I really, really do."
"What happened?" Sam asked, all of a sudden. Dean raised an eyebrow. "What happened to us? How is this all so different all of a sudden? It's like we're not the same people anymore. The Dean I know would never have given that little speech just then."
"And the Sam I know wouldn't start kicking people's asses in bars or cry, but there you go."
"I wasn't crying," Sam said, his voice warning. Dean raised an eyebrow, completing the doubting look with a sarcastic thumbs-up.
"Of course you weren't," he said in a mock-comforting voice. His mood then turned serious, like flicking a switch. "People change. Maybe we have. I mean, it's not like we fight anymore." The last phrase was dripping with sarcasm.
"I didn't mean...I don't mean to hold a grudge."
"You had a right to," Dean said, brushing it off. Sam took a deep breath, gathering the courage to say what he was about to. He didn't know what Dean's reaction would be.
"I'm getting worse," he said. Dean raised an eyebrow, surprised.
"What? Do you mean you're feeling worse?"
"Not in that way," Sam replied.
"In what way, then?" Dean's eyebrows were now furrowed, his lips pressed together in his trademark concerned look. He studied Sam, looking for the answer in his face. Sam didn't say anything immediately. "Like, depression?"
"No," Sam assured. "I mean...I can't control it anymore."
"Oh," was all Dean said. But that tiny remark said it all.
"I've been sitting up at night thinking, and I'll see a shadow or hear something and it'll trigger something and all of a sudden I get angry. Every day it keeps building up, and I keep getting mad, furious, at everything, even you. I can't stop it."
Dean must have noticed how much he looked like he was about to start going on a rant. "Alright," he said in a somewhat attempt at a calming tone. "How long has this been happening?"
"The last week, ever since that night in the alley."
"Do you think what they did to you has anything to do with it?"
"No doubt," Sam said matter-of-factly.
"What was what they gave you?"
Sam really didn't want to explain, but Dean was genuinely curious, and it was something he needed to know about. "It's the first step. It's sort of like a sedative, only it weakens your mind. It works more specifically on psychics who naturally have more defenses up around their consciousness. It breaks those barriers down and lets the demon get in there and do what it wants to with your mind."
"So you think it might have weakened the walls--"
"--and let my other side in more. Yeah, I do." His voice sounded oddly uninterested, bored even though he needed Dean to understand. "But it's more than that. I don't think it even would have mattered."
Dean still looked away, but Sam continued with a more forceful tone so that Dean would have to listen to him. "None of the others lasted as long as I have before it took over in the first place, and I'm the only one that got out. There was no telling what could have happened."
Dean bit the side of his mouth as a distraction as he thought. "Why didn't you talk to me about this before?"
"I didn't want to scare you."
"Well, you definitely picked the right time to bring it up," Dean threw back sarcastically. "Like we needed another problem."
"You know what this means, don't you?" Sam asked, and Dean glanced at him tentatively. "It means that we're in a race, with three options trying to win out, and neither of us knows which is going to hit the big finish line first. This poison catches up with me, my other side takes over completely, or we find some way to get the antidote from them and I somehow manage to fight this off another day."
"I'm putting my money on horse number three, thank you very much," Dean said.
"It's not looking good, Dean," Sam insisted, but Dean shook his head, constantly in denial of the obvious. "Do you know what this means?"
"I don't know, and I don't care," Dean said. "This isn't going to control you. You fought through it once; you can do it again. This demon isn't going to tell you what to do, and if anything happens to you, I'll--"
"You'll what?" Sam asked. "Perform an exorcism? Go for all the psychics to get this thing out of me? I'm not possessed."
"Maybe an exorcism could work. We've never tried it."
"It'll just piss me off," Sam answered, and Dean looked even more uncomfortable. "What?" he asked curiously. Dean looked like he didn't want to reply, but he did.
"I don't like when you refer to it and you as the same thing."
"We are the same thing. We're the same person. I can't fight myself, that's the problem. I'll never be able to last."
"Yes, you will," Dean said angrily.
"This is going to get me, no matter how far we run or how hard we fight. And when it does, you need to do what you need to do."
"I'm not even going to listen to you now," Dean said, his eyes narrowed, daring Sam to keep going. And he did.
"You've known how this was going to end since you found out what was wrong. You knew we were just buying time"
"No," Dean said stubbornly. "I don't think I got that memo."
"What did you expect?" Sam threw back. "A happy ending?"
"I expected you not to be so freaking stupid and just give up."
"You knew," Sam repeated. "You were just getting me back for a few more months, a year maybe. You were just getting time to say goodbye, and to get ready for what you knew you needed to do."
Dean didn't answer.
"I'm a time bomb, and you have to be ready for what you always knew you had to do."
Author's Note: Hope you liked the chapter. I'm afraid to say I won't be sure how long it will be between updates for a few more weeks. It depends on school, and whether or not my teachers continue to be this cruel. I had to rush in between projects to get this chapter written. The one project I might have fun during, a debate about the American Revolution with people form each side, the Patriots and the Loyalists, and I get stuck as a neutral. Ugh!
Anyway, this chapter was originally going to be set to a song and was going to be half as long (hey, that rhymes), but it didn't work out, so I added a lot more to it to make up for that. It really didn't have much happening before.
(-Do not read below if you do not want semi-spoilers for the upcoming episodes of season 2 in the US-)
One more thing: I can't believe the promos for the new episode, Born Under A Bad Sigh, which is this Thursday for the US. Let me just say really quickly about how the plot was going to develop for season 2 about Sam: I called it!!! Sorry, lol. No, forget I said that. I've also seen the promo pictures on super .emedian .net, and let me say, I'm creeped out, especially by the one in the bottom row (If you want to check it out, it's really freaky, and something I've actually wanted to see on the show for a VERY long time. If you can't get to it, I can e-mail you the link). I'm excited. I never thought this would actually happen on the show. For some reason, I can't get on the CW website to see the director's cut clips, and that's killing me. Grrr...
Up Next: The vision. Can't tell you much else. Review! Don't hesitate to ask questions or give criticisms.
