Author's Note: This is my first SN fanfic, originally posted on snfic on Livejournal. It's not beta-ed, so I hope it's not too bad. The song lyrics are, as stated, from 'Currents' by Dashboard Confessional, and the poetry is 'Fire and Ice' by Robert Frost. Concrit is very welcome.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Kripke is master

If it is born in flames then we should let it burn
Burn as brightly as we can
And if it's got to end then let it end in flames
Let it burn all the way down, all the way down

- 'Currents', Dashboard Confessional

Flicking the lighter one more time, Sam watched the resulting flame as it danced and swayed in front of his eyes. Then he watched it die. With a sigh, he tossed the empty lighter aside, and rested his head in his hands. Yet another night in another grimy dive. He'd lost Dean over an hour ago, though whether it was to the pool table or the overtly friendly blonde by the bar, he couldn't quite recall. But Sam knew one thing, and that was that he was not exactly good company tonight. He couldn't bring himself out of whatever funk it was that was bringing him down. And he suddenly couldn't remember where he was, and then realised it was just another night in another bar, then a toss up of a motel or driving away from Nowhere USA to somewhere else on an equal footing. At some point it had all began to merge into one. He simply hadn't noticed. His mind had been elsewhere.

He was tired. Too tired, and he felt the weight of everything, and the emptiness of months of nothingness pressing down on him until he felt he couldn't breathe from it. He couldn't find relief, couldn't find rest. Every time he came to close his eyes to rest, it was there, over and over. Fire, flame, pained eyes and questioning lips. And every time it brought an ache inside his chest that Sam could never ease. On the rare occasions that he was spared ongoing repeats of that moment, something in his unconscious mind would never allow him respite. He dreamed of pain. He dreamed of everything he had lost, and everything he had never known. Sam dreamed of fire. Not that fire, but all fire. Fire that left scars and marks that could never be erased, no matter how hard you might try. Fire that scorched the earth, branded the skin and left it raw and bare. Fire that burned your soul. From some corner of his mind, Sam recalled a few lines of poetry. He couldn't work out where he'd heard it, but it had always echoed through him, bouncing around the emptiness.

Some say the world will end with fire,

Some say with ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

He could relate to it. Every time he built himself a world, it ended in fire. It would make sense to him if the entire world were eaten by flames. Then why had he spent the better part of an evening entranced, hypnotised by a small flame in the palm of his hand?

Looking down at the table top, scratched and dirty, he saw a half empty book of matches. He picked them up, and turned them over and over in his hands, then struck one, and watched the flame. Some said that fire was cleansing, that fire purified. Baptism of fire. No. He would never believe that. Fire did nothing but destroy, harm. There was only one Phoenix in the world at one time, so mythology said, and he knew it wasn't him. He was the one who started the fire, he was the cause, so nothing new, nothing good would ever rise out of its ashes for him. How could it?

The match was turning black, and would burn him in barely a few seconds. Sam found he didn't care. He deserved to burn. He either had to stop the fire, or burn himself. So far he had not succeeded in stopping it, a failure on yet another level. So tonight he would burn. Tonight he would burn, and tomorrow he would carry on trying to put the fire out.