AN: Possibly because I usually remember my dreams and often have lucid dreams, I'm slightly obsessed with dreamscapes. Slightly.
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Deep into the darkness peering
Long I stood there wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
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One second, Sam was clawing his way out of being buried alive and the next he was standing in a bleak landscape, the colors dark and muted. He squinted around, trying to bring the horizon into focus, but nothing was clear. The ground was black, the sky was gray, and the shifting shapes in his peripheral vision were gray, all forming an eerie, lovecraftian vista. His thoughts were as dim as his vision. Obviously, something was very, very wrong, but he couldn't put together the pieces.
Where? How? What?
There was a feeling of dread that Sam could neither shake nor explain. He didn't know much, but he absolutely knew he didn't want to be here. What were they...? They, not just him. "Dean?" Sam called, except he couldn't make a sound.
A feeling of aloneness made Sam cold to his very core. Dean was not here, but something was.
The ground in the distance was moving and Sam's sense of wrongness intensified, until he felt nauseated. He tried to back away, turn away, anything to get away from what was rising out of the ground, but he couldn't even close his eyes.
The viscous black liquid rose in long strands that twisted together into shapes like arthritic fingers. The image reminded Sam of something, as did the tar-like appearance of the ground, but the thought was elusive. The thing looked like a combination of a gnarled, dead tree with bare branches and a giant black sea anemone, which should have made it ridiculous.
It wasn't. So dark it stood out even in this monochromatic land, it radiated rancor with every twitch and gyration. Sam could only be grateful it was so far away. If he could have moved at all, he would have gone away from the thing, no matter what that entailed.
As Sam's revulsion grew, conversely he couldn't stop staring at the nightmare tree.
Nightmare. That's right. He'd been trapped by the oneiroi, the nightmare manifestation. He must have lost consciousness and it wanted to scare him to death. He just had to figure out how to fight it and wake up. Somehow.
The ground beneath Sam and the writhing figure suddenly was no longer an amorphic gray, but a living, dirty white, fluttering carpet. There hadn't been any sign of change; it was just simply different from one second to the next.
The ground suddenly began to truly move, rising up in an uneven mass, and Sam saw it was actually hundreds of thousands of white moths. They filled the air, though they never managed to block his view of the nightmare figure.
Pain sliced through Sam's head, hot and angry, and the moths began to morph, not suddenly but gradually this time. They turned into spirits, some white and wispy, some like black smoke. They fled every direction, some shrieking or laughing. Escaping, Sam thought, but didn't have a conscious reason for the thought. Something about this scene felt more real to Sam that the moths, even while watching it made his head hurt more.
Then the spirits were gone like someone had changed the channel. The pain in Sam's head eased and he squinted at the new tableau. It had the look of a swamp with a pair of glowing, unwieldy bubbles floating above the dark, dirty water. They were a muted orange and wobbled unsteadily. Sam recognized them as corpse lights, a sure sign that death magic had been performed nearby.
The lights floated up, higher than corpse lights actually ever went. Then they started to change too, and pain lanced through Sam's head again as the lights morphed into a pair of glowing blue eyes that radiated power. Sam felt fear and resentment he couldn't explain. He gasped, but the eyes winked away too, taking the pain with them.
Next, a giant clock face took over the bleak sky, its hands frozen just before midnight. It melted, dripping into the slaggy ground, all except the top hand, which shifted into a simple wooden cross in a field. Sam had expected the stabbing pain in his left eye, but the utter devastation that filled him was a surprise. Like this apparent grave held his entire soul. He was grateful to blink and find it gone.
In its place was an open scissors, and that should mean something to Sam...some lore or superstition. But the too-familiar pain was back and the scissors stretched itself into the shape into a cadaverous man in a suit with a curved blade stuck in his arm. The man blinked and collapsed into ash. Shock relief fear hope flashed through Sam, though he didn't know why.
He got the pattern now. He saw a death omen, like the moths or stopped clock, then felt pain and the portent changed into a scene that felt real, that made him feel strong emotions. Then the pattern started over.
It was like his mind was fighting back against the oneiroi's images. But with what? They weren't memories, and they weren't even pleasant images. A voice broke through Sam's reverie and he realized with a start that it was the first thing he'd actually heard since he'd come here.
"...Sammy, time..." He strained to hear more, but it was enough to tell him exactly who it was he heard and even make him smile.
The tree like figure swelled in size and waved more frantically, as if it needed to push harder, and Sam's stomach cramped with nausea.
A white horse was the next thing to appear, beautiful and terrible. It charged at Sam, but before it could trample him, it melted into man that suddenly threw his head back. His mouth stretching so wide that it resembled a remora, a circle of triangular teeth. Sam flinched hard, and not at the headache. What kind of monster was that?!
"...freakishly tall..." Dean's voice grounded him and the man / monster disappeared.
Instead, the ground turned into bubbling mud, but it only lasted a mere moment before migraine like pain heralded a change. Now Sam saw burning asteroids plunging toward Earth, each with a shape like someone with wings inside it.
"Dammit, kiddo," cut right through the pain, and Sam really wished he could figure out how to respond, and get out of this loop. He wouldn't even complain much about the nickname. But he couldn't so much as twitch, much less call out.
A flock of crows was the next sight Sam saw, and he would've snorted if he could have. Cliche much? He wasn't at all surprised that the crows disbursed and disappeared. That is, all except one that grew to human size, wings spread like it would take flight, fading even as it grew. The wings didn't disappear, but turned into shadows. A figure appeared between them and Sam stared, bemused, at the sight of his brother with wings.
"I'll get Sam," said Dean's voice, even though the mouth of the Dean Sam was seeing never moved. Still, it was so damn good to see any version of Dean that Sam clung to it even as his head felt like it would explode. Too soon, it slipped away.
Now, Sam was looking at a stand mirror with a cloth draped over it. The cloth slithered to the ground to reveal a long crack diagonally across the mirror's surface.
The mirror dissolved, but Sam's reflection didn't. But it was a harder version of Sam, defiant, eyes dilated and blood painting the bottom half of his face. Real Sam winced, deeply disturbed by something in his doppelganger's demeanor. He waited for Dean's voice to break the scene, but it didn't this time.
Sam tried to figure that out, but he just couldn't think through the pain in his head any longer, even as he found himself in a nameless cemetery. An open grave gaped at his feet, rain falling into it. Many people would have found it ominous. But for Sam, who had dug up so many graves, the scene was merely familiar.
Then pain pierced his brain so intensely that he would have collapsed if he could have moved. As he silently screamed, the hole stretched and grew, the dirt around its edges crumbling in. The rain disappeared, but the tombstones did not. And Sam knew that there was something horrific beyond words at the bottom of that hole. That hole terrified him more than anything else ever had in his entire life. But just when he thought he must surely fall in, that voice, his lifeline, spoke fiercely.
"You can't have him!"
That's right. The oneiroi couldn't have him. Sam gave a terrific wrench -- how, he couldn't have told you -- and turned away from the oily figure. He felt rather than heard its scream of negation, then the entire view disappeared and it was just Sam struggling to open his eyes.
The return of sensation was confusing. Sam was lying on his back, but his head hurt so much he couldn't untangle anything else. There were other pains. And sounds, too, which was significant somehow.
God, he hurt. But he wasn't afraid any longer, and that was important too. Something wiped gently under his nose, then again. Sam still couldn't interpret the voice (voices?) but along with the touch, it gave him the information he really needed. He didn't manage to get his eyes open, but he groped up with one hand and got ahold of something.
Sleeve. Wrist. Dean. The hand stilled as soon as he grabbed it, but a different one took over wiping something wet off his face. Blood on his face? That sounded familiar. It bothered Sam.
"Sammy?" The voice, Dean's voice, had been talking, but it sounded like so much gibberish until that word.
Sam wanted to rest and at the same time was afraid to go to sleep, though he couldn't think past the damn headache to remember why. Ribbons of troubled memories floated past and he couldn't corral any of them.
Frustrated, Sam pealed his eyes open as far as he could, the effort drawing a low sound from him. He tightened his grip and drew comfort from the contact. "Wings?" he asked the green eyes above him, but immediately forgot why he asked and couldn't make out the answer anyway.
There was something Dean needed to know about a tree that wasn't dead and Sam thought there was something about glowing eyes, maybe even a grave? But everything got muddled up on the way to his mouth, and what Dean was saying was all gibberish again, and Sam was so tired anyway.
Dean's voice was soothing even if Sam didn't understand. "Dean," he said, pleased that it came out right.
It was enough. Sam let his hand fall and went to sleep, and this time, the dreams didn't follow.
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AN: All nine of the things the oneiroi showed Sam here are or were considered death omens in various cultures around the world, from the open scissors to the white horse. What Sam's brain turns them into is scenes from his future. When I read that Nyx is affiliated with prophecy, I wondered what a connection to an oneiroi might do to Sam's burgeoning powers, and this weirdness is the result of that thought.
The nightmare tree thingie is my own invention.
Timelady66: I'm glad you don't mind the creep factor, or the non canon part. And even more that my weirdo one shot made you laugh! How could I pass on that comment?! Obviously, I couldn't.
supernaturalsammy67: Thank you so much. In another story, Dean told some monsters that he killed their relative "because he took something of mine," meaning Sam, and that possessiveness just warms the cockles of my cold little heart, so it showed up in this story too.
JaniceC678: Oh, yeah, you called it with the nightmare scenario. I'm predictable sometimes. I'm happy that you didn't mind my tweak to the show's timeline. And I hope this didn't get too weird for you.
Jenjoremy: Now the boys are reunited. Sort of. Good thing it's Dean's turn to narrate, since poor Sam's not quite all there after what he went through. Did you really think I'd lighten up on the whumpage? Yeah, no. Not even sorry. ;-)
MewWinx96: Thanks for the smile!
Lena: Holy banana pants is officially my new favorite phrase! I say holy cannoli a lot, but it's banana pants going forward! Many, many nightmares for Sam because I'm mean like that. I'm kind of dying to know what you thought of this chapter, tbh.
Kathy: The oneiroi is a one eyed king from here on out! I think in cards, that's the king of diamonds. Either way, the oneiroi isn't dead yet, so we'll see more of it. And I have an entire flashback specifically for you, but not for a little bit yet. I'm glad you consider the funky twists interesting and not just whackadoodle. LOL
Long Live BRUCAS: Well, he was sort of awake! hehe
muffinroo: Aw man, I can't believe you called dibs! You can share, just a little, can't you? Pretty please? I promise to be nice to him...or at least I'll try to.