Title: Perchance to Dream (4/6)
Spoilers: "Nightmare" (very vague), plus the show up 'til now
Summary: Dean helps Sam sleep, with unexpected consequences.
Author's notes: As always, with much gratitude to Faye, beta-extraordinaire! Also, big thanks for all of the encouraging reviews! Glad you all are enjoying the story!
Disclaimer: The mistakes are the only things I can truly call my own.
Perchance to DreamPart IV: Into the Fire
Dean stretched and rolled to his side, glancing at the clock as he sought his brother's features through the half-light. Sam was still, his head burrowed into the pillow. He must have shifted during the night – he now lay crossways over the bed – but there were no other signs of movement.
Dean did the math and figured Sam had been asleep for nearly seven hours – a record unmatched since they'd been back on the road together. He breathed a sigh of relief. He'd had his doubts about the sleeping pills, and had woken up several times during the night to check that Sam was okay. But Sam had been peaceful in his sleep, and the steady, even cadence of his breathing had gradually eased Dean's mind.
It was earlier than he would have liked, but Dean thought he would only have two or three hours at best before Sam awoke, and he'd planned to spend the time doing laundry. He'd found a 24-hour place in the yellow pages the night before that was close to the motel. With any luck, they'd be on the road by lunchtime with all their major tasks for the day complete.
He gathered their dirty clothes and shoved them into an empty duffel, then grabbed his wallet and room key and pulled his knife out from under the pillow to put back into the sheath hidden inside his jacket. He watched Sam for another moment, considering, and then laid the .9 millimeter on the nightstand nearest Sam's bed. Just in case. He walked out the door, flipping the service sign to "Do Not Disturb," and closed it quietly. The day was clear and cool, and he actually planned to enjoy the short walk to the laundromat.
Drip.
No.
Drip.
No, please . . .
Drip.
Please, no more . . .
Sam kept his eyes shut, knowing this time what he would see if he opened them. Jess. Oh, God, Jess . . .
The familiar nightmare was so much worse after having seen Jess whole. After thinking, even fleetingly, that he was with her again. After she had damned him for the demon he was and cast him back to hell . . .
He barely stifled a sob.
His hands clenched against thehardness of the bed below him as the stickiness of the blood permeated his skin. He knew there was no escape, but he still couldn't bear to look. He'd been tortured by this vision too many times and he didn't have the strength to face it again. Jess would plead for him, face fixed in shades of muted horror. Her blood would drown him and the flames would smother them both, but he would not open his eyes. Not this time.
"Sam, I know you're awake. Open your eyes. It's time to get up."
Despite his resolve, Sam's eyes flew open at the sound of his father's voice. And he knew he was, indeed, in hell.
It was not Jessica's body pinned above him this time, but his mother's. And unlike the last time he had seen her – ablaze but intact in Lawrence – he was looking back in time at the nightmare that had started it all. She was slashed across her abdomen, just as Jess had been, and the crimson dots that marred Sam's brow were formed from her blood. His mother's blood.
"Mom." He could barely force the word out.
"Why, Sam? Why?"
With those three words, she damned him, too. His soul took them as blows, feeling the utter responsibility, the blame, the absolute guilt that they imparted.
"I – I – " He swallowed, his throat raw with tears. He shook his head feebly, trying to deny what was happening.
"Your mother asked you a question, Samuel, and I had better hear an answer."
Sam's eyes were drawn at once to his father, who sat at the end of his bed, patiently sharpening a curved knife – Sam's curved knife. The blade caught the light, and John's eyes glinted dangerously as he stared at his son. His hand never slowed as he pulled the steel against the whetstone, long scrapes echoing in the silence of the room. His tone was the one that brooked no argument, the tone Sam remembered from too many instances in his childhood. Moments when Sam had stood in impotent fury, his demands for answers, for understanding, for solace, ignored or crushed.
Sam had spent a significant amount of his life angry with his father – his choices and his methods. Now, though, Sam felt small and afraid and powerless and he had never wanted anything more than he wanted his father to reach out and help him, to end this nightmare once and for all.
"Dad, please . . ."
John brought the knife up and pointed it at him. "You heard me, Sam. I won't tolerate disrespect. Answer your mother."
Sam pressed his head back into the unforgiving mattress, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
"Why, Sam?"
I don't know! I don't know, Mom. I –
"I'm sorry." Sam's words were barely a whisper, and once he'd started saying them, he couldn't stop. "ImsorryImsorryImsorryImsorry . . ."
He couldn't look at her, couldn't look away. Her beautiful face was twisted in agony and revulsion. Revulsion for me. My fault. I killed . . . He squeezed his eyes shut again, trying to keep those thoughts at bay, but it was not to be.
"I told you to open your eyes."
John was above him now, the knife raised in his hand.
"This is what you've done, Sam. It's time you faced up to it."
John leaned in close and Sam tried to shrink away from him, but there was nowhere to go. John's voice was soft now, with a lilt Sam hardly recognized. A half-memory flickered in the back of his mind, a faded picture a father on the couch with two small sons snuggled against him, reading bedtime stories. That gentleness had not lasted past Sam's toddler years, and to hear it now, in this place, under these circumstances, carved wounds in Sam's soul.
"You're the one, Sammy. You're what I've been hunting all this time. You know that, don't you?"
Denials sprang to Sam's lips and died as John continued.
"You are the destruction."
John shook his head with a small smile, as though he couldn't quite believe his discovery.
"It was right here in front of me, all along. I could have ended this years ago."
He shifted, and over his shoulder, Sam saw the first flames fan to life around his mother.
"All this time, your mother's killer, right here with me. We could've saved so much time. Dean could have had a normal life. I can't believe I never put it together."
Sam's mouth was working, opening and closing, but he couldn't form words. This is not happening. This is not happening. This IS NOT –
"But we can end it tonight, can't we, son?"
Licks of fire spiraled out across the ceiling, enveloping his mother's body.
"Why, Sam? Why?"
The words spun around him, tugging at him, still demanding an answer.
"We'll end the destruction, once and for all."
His father raised the knife above him, and even before it began its descent, Sam could feel it slicing into him, ripping through skin and sinew, tearing through his body like the talon of a beast.
Flames erupted everywhere now – ceiling, walls, floor, bed. His mother was no longer visible, his father engulfed in fire. And as his own flesh started to blister and sizzle, Sam finally started screaming.