Title: Perchance to Dream (3/6)
Spoilers: "Nightmare" (very vague)
Summary: Dean helps Sam sleep, with unexpected consequences.
Author's notes: Once again, hats off to Faye for the unparalleled beta and enthusiasm! Also, big thanks for all of the encouraging reviews! Glad you all are enjoying the story. (But you might have to wait a little for Part IV).
Disclaimer: The mistakes are the only things I can truly call my own.
Perchance to Dream
Part III: Out of the Frying Pan
Darkness gave way to light – bright light. Sam blinked hard, trying to help his eyes adjust. The motel room was gone, and he sitting in a hard plastic chair. He rubbed a hand roughly over his face, trying to wipe away the memory of his brother and the damned empty guns. His hand dropped and he looked around, getting his bearings. What he saw next took his breath away.
The last thing Sam expected when he fled from the motel room was Jessica. And even if he had expected her, he could not have foreseen her being in a cap and gown, sitting next to him with a long line of black-robed strangers, in seats above the 50-yard line in Stanford Stadium. She was looking straight ahead at a stage in the middle of the football field.
For a moment, all he could do was stare. He hadn't seen her like this since before – before . . . He squeezed his eyes shut to block out the vision of the last time he had seen Jess, pinned to the ceiling of the bedroom they had shared, bleeding and burning and begging him for a reason why, why her life was ending in a slash of pain and terror.
When he opened his eyes, she was still there. Still sitting, still looking as though this were an everyday occurrence. Sitting. Breathing. He visually traced the line of her neck, the smooth curve of her jaw, the delicate shell of her ear. She wore tiny, gold hoop earrings – his gift to her for their last Christmas together. Her hair lay in silken waves, rustling over the starkness of the black acetate with the faint breeze that drifted through the stadium.
He could feel her . . . lovely, human warmth radiating from her body and bridging the fragile distance between them.
He swallowed, willing this apparition to stay. He couldn't stop, didn't even notice the sudden flow of tears that clogged his throat and spilled down his cheeks.
"Jess?" He breathed her name, his voice a mix of hope and agonized incredulity. He had seen her so many times in his dreams, but not like this. Never like this. "What are you doing here?"
Jess didn't look at him, her gaze still fixed on the scene unfolding on the grass below. "Shh, Sam! This is the important part."
He couldn't tear his eyes away from her. She looked so different, and yet exactly the same. Jess here, beside him. Warm. Alive. He could even smell her shampoo and the perfume she always wore – a little fingerprint, brushed along the base of her throat. He reached out to touch her, but drew back, suddenly afraid. He couldn't bear the thought that he was wrong, that this wasn't real, that he would wake up (wake up) with hands full of nothing and ash on his tongue.
"Jess." It was only one word – just a name – but it held a lifetime's worth of yearning, of need. With it, he begged her to look at him, to acknowledge him, to be with him in a way she hadn't been for so long.
"Sam . . ." Her voice was mildly annoyed, and suddenly, he could hear her warning him the way she used to when he tried to distract her during their marathon study sessions. It was the voice that said, I'm concentrating; don't start, but in reality the books would be forgotten moments later. In that voice, Sam could hear her laugh as they wrestled over her favorite highlighter. He could taste the sweetness of the ice cream they would share, eating off the same spoon and without the need for a bowl. He could feel the soft slide of her lips over his as they kissed languorously over the backs of the spindle-legged chairs at the table in their kitchen. It was a voice filled with humor, with caring, with promise.
He had missed that voice. God, how he had missed it.
"Jess, please." Why wouldn't she look at him? What could possibly be more important than this moment, more important than the two of them, together – no longer fragments but whole?
He heard a huff of breath, a small, exasperated sigh as she finally turned toward him. "Sam, you know they're going to be testing us on this later. Now, please. Pay attention!"
He barely got a glimpse of her face before she turned back to the field in full concentration. Distressed, perplexed, he finally looked, too.
On the stage below, deans and professors in brightly colored, full-sleeved robes stood in even lines, divided around a central podium. Someone was speaking, the words echoing vacantly through static-filled amplifiers and rolling over the stadium rows in subtle waves.
Sam couldn't understand the words; they were gibberish to him. But Jess listened with rapt attention, nodding in key places. Sam spared a glance at the sea of faces around him and saw identical expressions of concentration, even fervor. The stadium began to fill with the sound of thousands of voices, chanting in unison – Jess's among them.
"Jess, what is this?" He had to force the words out, certain now that where they were wasn't real, that Jess wasn't real. Her actions, the scene – none of it fit. They had never been here, and Jess had certainly never ignored him in this way or made him feel like his presence was insignificant.
Realizing the truth, that this was just another dream, was somehow more devastating than when he relived their last moments together. He hadn't seen her anywhere but above him, sliced and smoldering, since that day. He had never thought to see her any way but that again. Losing that slender thread of hope, the hope that she was really with him again, was like losing her a second time. Like when he had lost his mother again, back in Lawrence.
His breath hitched as he fought back a sob.
Jess broke off the chant and rolled her eyes. "Sam, you know what this is. It's been waiting for you your whole life. You are the destruction."
And as she said these words, the gibberish Sam had heard became recognizable. "Ego iacio vos sicco, everto, in nomen de Abbas, Filius, quod Spiritu Sanctu. Amen."
The blood drained from Sam's face and he felt a shift in the air as the entire crowd turned to face him. They stared at him, mouths moving in sync, faces uniform and featureless as they repeated the words of the exorcism rite over and over.
When Jess turned to him this time, her eyes were black and soulless. "You are the destruction, Sam."
He felt a horror he had never known, not in 23 years of facing evil, as Jess made the sign of the cross in the emptiness between them and picked up the chant. "Ego iacio vos sicco, everto, in nomen de Abbas, Filius, quod Spiritu Sanctu. Amen."
The words grew louder and Sam recoiled in his seat, unable to believe what was happening.
"Jess, no! This is -" But his mind couldn't create a coherent thought.
Jess reached for something at her feet and when she sat up, she held a bottle in her hand. As she twisted the cap, Sam could see the gold cross emblazoned on the plastic. Holy water, he realized distantly. Before he had time to process why she had it, she was pouring it over him. As drops caught the bare skin of his arms and face, he felt it penetrate like acid.
He cried out as it burned him, black sores erupting where the blessed water made contact. The scent of sulfur was filling his nose and mouth and he couldn't breathe, dear God, he couldn't breathe.
Wake up! Please, let me wake up! He was crying again, but this time in abject terror. Jess continued to empty the bottle over him, and the intensity of the chanting built.
"Ego iacio vos sicco, everto, in nomen de Abbas, Filius, quod Spiritu Sanctu. Amen."
Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP! But his body wouldn't respond, and no one seemed to hear him. The Latin words and brimstone swept over him, closing in, pulling him under until he only knew blackness.
("I cast you out, demon, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen." I used a web translation site, so apologies if it's not absolutely correct.)